+788

WITCHES
 +789
BY the same Author
WHTCH{trS
GOGMAGOG: THE BURIED GODS
GHOST AND GHOUL Investigating an Ancient
Religion

by
T. C. LETHBRIDGE

\
so.

Routledge and Kegan Paul

LONDON
 First published rcoq,
€l Kegan Paul Ltd
by Routledge
Broadway House,68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.+
Contents
Printed in Great Britairt
by Western Printing Seroices Ltd
Bristol
O 7. C. Lethbridge te62 Preface ?age lx
No pmt of this book may be reproduted Chapter One I
in any form. without permission from Chapter Two 6
the publisher, ercept for the quotation
of brief passages in criticism Chapter Three 37
Chapter Four 44
Chapter Five 56
Chapter Six 66
Chapter Seven 74
Chapter Eight 105
Chapter Nine r24
Chapter Ten r28
Chapter Eleven 148
Index r51
 Figures
l. (a) Sketch of wooden carving at the base of a Vancouver
Island totem pole. (b) Artemis of Ephesus page 2t
a (a) Sketch of Gallo-Roman bronze of Epona with her mare
and foal. (b) Plan of Magog as excavated at Wandle-
bury 33
s. (u) Sketch of a god with inscription 'Cernunnos' found
beneath Notre Dame Cathedral. (b) Copy of a palaeo-
lithic figure from a cave in AriEge 35'
+. (a) Sketch of the 'Devil's Stone', Copgrove, near Ripon.
(b) Horned stone, Celtic head from Heidelberg
D. (t) Duke \&'illiam at the Battle of Hastings.(2) The Cerne
Giant (Helith, Helios, or Hercules). (s) Sun symbol
from a coin of Edward III. (E) Bronze Ag" sun
symbols from the Bohuslan rock engravings. (5) St.
Michael from a gold 'angel'of Edward IV 48
Sketch map of south-west England between Bridg-
water Bay and the Wiltshire Avon 5s
(a) Kali, (b) Siva, from Indian bronzes 67
Reconstruction of floor-tile from Hole, Branscombe 70
Sketch map of the country within a six-mile radius of
Wandlebury 84
Two Shiela-na-gigs 86
(a) Sketch from a painting by James Mellaart of an elec-
trum figure of a goddess. (b) (After Hans Itjaer) 90
Wandlebury Goddess separated from her mount 9l
Celtic gods from the British Isles 98
Return of the old gods rog
Stone cross-shaft from Isle of Canna t2t
( t) Bronze figure of Isis tlpe from the temple of the
Seine. (z) 'Isis' bird and fish on a modern Highland
coaster t26
vii
 Preface

There is really only one study of man, and this should be known
as Anthropology. Medical Science, History, Archaeology, Folk
Lore and the rest are all branches of the one study. But this
present age is one of specialization and all these branches are
tending to become so elaborate and, at the same time, so con-
stricted that we are in need of trained middle-men, who have a
wide enough grasp of all of them to be able to pull the whole
thing together and present it in readable form to those who wish
to learn. These middle-men really do not exist today, for there
is no training to fit them for the task. The Scottish university
system is much better than the English in this respect; but even
there the scope of training could be wider.
After watching the steady growth of specialization for many
years, sometimes when sitting in considerable boredom on a
Faculty Board at Cambridge, it seemed to me to be something of
a duty to spend as much time as possible trying to pull together
some of the information which is being scattered among different
studies. To this I add my own ideas and speculations, in the hope
that the resulting pottage may be of general interest and even
perhaps of some value.
As I sit at my desk here in Branscombe and look over my left
shoulder, I can see the sea through a gap in the wooded ridges.
Sometimes fog shrouds it and at other times it is blotted out by
driving squalls of wind and rain. But all the time I know that it
is there and with that knowledge I am content.
For several thousand years that sea has been the only road by
which men and ideas could come to Britain and the very crossing
of that sea has always carried an element of risk and change. No
idea has ever come to rest in Britain which has not been changed
in the process, and it has been the same with religious ideas as
lx
much as with any others. Therefore we must not expect to find
that our old concepts were exactly the same as they were on the
continent of Europe. We must also find that we have to ex-
perience a certain amount of discomfort if we are to learn about
them at all. The discomfort in this study lies in the inordinate
number of unfamiliar names with which we have to cope. I know
that these may be boring to readers and I would avoid the use of
them if I could, but it is impossible. I have reduced them
as far as I dare to do so. But, just as in the seaman's trade it
is necessary to learn a new, but simple and effective, list of 'Diana and her darling crew shall pluck your
words, so this is necessary in the study of an old religion to com- fingers fine,
pare it with others. For this comparison one must use the names And lead you forth right pleasantly to sup the
of th" gods and goddesses which belong to them. Therefore no honey wine.
apology is reallyneeded and if readers find these names difficult To sup the honey wine, my loves, and breathe
una Uori"g they must understand that I have done my best to the heavenly air,
simplify matters. I am the last person to introduce unnecessary And dance, as the young angels dance. Ah god
names or terms. I leave these when possible to pedagogues. that I were there!'
I need not say much more by way of introduction. The witches
themselves have been kind and helpful; but, after hundreds of (Apparently a sixteenth<entury version of a
years of persecution, no one ought to expect them to. give them- hymn to Diana. It is sung to the tune of 'Jerusa-
ielves away. I have deliberately avoided prying into secrets lem my huppy home', a tune which may well
which they may wish to keep. The subject, however, is of great have belonged to it in the first place.)
general interest and in many ways I tli-nk they !uy" been
*ict.aty wronged. No study of religious history in Britain can
be even approximately correct which does not attempt to
evaluate their beliefs. They obviously represent the oldest form
of rationalized religion which still exists. One can hardly
describe totemistic beliefs as rational.
With this introductory warning, let us cut the cackle and
come to the horses; there are many in this story.
My wife, as on many former occasions, has been of the great-
est h;lp with this study. I think she has found it more interesting
than most of my efforts and perhaps this is some slight recom-
pense for her hard work in typing it out.
T.C.L.
 Chapter One

HIS book is an exercise in deduction and this exercise

was undertaken in an attempt to form a clear picture in my
mind from the information which I have been collecting for the
past four years or so. It is deduction applied to an old religion
instead of to a criminal act. Most of the evidence is circumstan-
tial, or inferential, and can neither be proved nor disproved. The
results obtained in the book may be quite wrorigr but they make
sense to me and may perhaps have some entertainment value to
others. The clues are drawn from ancient literature, anthro-
pology, archaeology and folk-lore, with the addition of informa-
tion supplied by modern devotees of the witch cult. The theme is
continued from the ideas suggested in Gogrnagog.
Those who hope to find detailed accounts of poor old women
mumbling over wax images in hovels, or piruring living frogs to
bits of wood and dropping them into wells, will be disappointed.
This is not a treatise on magic, but an investigation of old
religious belief. Neither is any interest taken in the obscene
decadence of the Black Mass and similar performances. These
are not edifying in themselves and only remotely connected with
the cult. As a Highland farmer once said to me, when describing
the condition of a neighbour's house, 'There is a difference
between dirt and filth.' This observation applies to the witch
cult. Although its devotees performed rites which appear to be
highly indecent in a modern context, these were done in the firm
belief that they were the way in which their deities required to be
worshipped and not in a licentious spirit. All witches aver that they
derive a great sense of serenity and peace from their ceremonies,
presumably as a result of psychological relaxation. The Black
Mass is performed as a magic trick to obtain unlawful desires.
The one is dirt today: the other is filth. Dirt can be washed off
easily: filth is ingrained.
t
 The main purpose of this book is to try tgtnd out by r-easol- England today. I have talked with members of witch covens. It is
ing and infer^ence whether Dr. Margaret Murray's witch .1111 not possible to learn a great deal about its beliefs, or ritual,
*f,i.h she resurrected from almost complete oblivion in her however, because it is a secret religion owing to the persecution
witch cult in western Etrope and God of tlu witches, can be it has undergone. To learn all, one would have to become a mem-
identified with an earlier beiief. If it can,-where did this belief ber of a coven and then it would not be possible to write about it
come from and when did it arisel To do this, I am going to make owing to the oath of secrecy. Nevertheless a great body of infor-
use of any scraps of evidence which seem to fit into the pictur-e, mation has been collected by Dr. Murray and others, while
of what subject produces them. There is fortunately recently a practising member of a coven, Dr. G. B. Gardner, has
-the
".grraf#
litite dogma as yet in tt ay of what may !e called Palaeo- published several books which lift some of the covering thrown
tfr".f"gf. The dogma will no doubt, as it always does jn over the subject.
"o*"
*V r,ifi:..t. Th."d.og*" formulate{ by Malinowski, that the Taking the information collected by the folk-lore enthusiasts,
*itropllogy of Eur[pe was too difficult for stud], has been a of whom the late Charles Leland was a notable example,
great tri.rar:u""e to resiarch and robbed his devotees of the most together with the disclosures of the witches themselves, it is
interesting area in the world. The techniques of the anthro- possible to form a very fair idea of the religion and to compare it
that their range of vision is with others. In the next chapter I intend to give a summary of
,G*p ?re b"coming so onerous dogmatic tail. is wagging the what.the religion appears to be, but first it is necessary to give a
narrowrng week by #eek. The_
*,trropoiogical dog and before_lo"g-.h: technical tail will wlg warnmg.
th. uritreJlogicalios also. The siholardegenerates into the All religions without exception appear to go through periods
artisan. There is nothilng really wrong with these tails, only the of evolution and devolution. They also go through times of
dogs need more biscuitJand i run now and then. One has seen amalgamation with other beliefs and those of splitting up into
the same conditions develop i" the field of zoology' sects. Some enlightened and often very great personality for-
"*i.tfy
There no young man dared to investigate reports of the dis- mulates and teaches a theory of the meaning of life and a code of
covery of slme fie* unimal, because his boss had said that ethics to go with this theory. The persons taught seldom, if ever,
such a
thirrgiouH not exist. It was as much as the ygu"g grasp the whole of his meaning and never remember all of it. A
TT't-i:P-tUin the classic example of this is told of the convocation of Buddha's
livel'.ihood were worth for him to show the slightest interest
;;t;;,. f"* things exert a greater pressure ihan an empty belly! disciples soon after their master's death. One claimed to have
ei me same timI, these s"ir" zoologists were busy in museums learnt the whole thing by heart and recited what he remembered
creating ,ru*.rous new species from dried skins and bones, to the meeting. At once a second disciple rose and, saying that he
despitJthe fact that obse*.rr in the field rePol:+ seeing all never remembered Buddha teaching anything of the kind, stalked
these new species happily breeding- togethgr' This phase.
of out of the assembly. From that moment two schools of thought
zoology upp6rrc to be'o'n ih. **. ifter i series of shocks' Any were formed and have existed for well over two thousand years.
duy niw *" *uy see somebody wander into South Kensington If this does not happen at once, it is certain to occur later.
-Loch
M"useum with a Ness moritt., on a string. In anthropology The next stage follows when the religion gathers impetus and
and urchaeology it is just getting into _its stride and
we must former members of other cults join it. Some of these invariably
or io, tha't the dicta of former heroes of bring parts of their earlier beliefs and add them to the master's
expect, for a glneration
th"se subjects"will be followed with-greater reverence than the teaching. A very little comparison between the teaching of
Corp"fr.
"Elaboration in technique of enthusiastic Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, with the dogmas of the
lrkt-the.place
i""Jrtigution. Without controlied imagination, the result is par- various branches of the Christian Church today, will show that
tial pafilysis, to say nothing of profound boredom' much has been added to the original; while the early examples of
I.[o*, ihe witch"cult stif survives as an organized belief in the Creed are about half the length of the existing version.
- 9
 lbunder by including all sorts of extraneous matter. At the same
Notonlydoconvertsbringfrag.mentsoftheiroldfaitlrinto
into exis- time, once it was really set in its way, it would take some fairly
their new one, il ;ir*tly a iot*it priesthood
cotnes
f# itt o* b.tt"fit. Priests must eat and violent movement to change its dogma and ritual.
tence it makes
"h*gu, clothes. The laity of their Ilemembering these points, we can now begin our study of the
in normat .ir.umrtio.es they need One of witch cult.
provide these necessities.
iaigi." must U. p"rrruaga f edible sacri-
the first steps is ti make it cleai that the-gods need
and ttren, as the-gods do not
fices. These ur" off.r.d to the gods who
seem to want them, gobbled ip by the priests. The man
to succeed in
nrri rnrrght of this rfiost fgeniour ia." deservedhowever, it is
be done,
his world of fr"*Uug. Befoie this can
so hard . y"9::T9
necessary to *ur." tr,? rules of the religion
the necessary ceremonles'
,frua o"f! a trained priest can perform
it rr, by eleva*1"g themselves into a position of- go-betweens,
on the other, they
with the gods or, ?fr. one hand and the laity
otler materials as they
are secured of ,ir.iri""J supply and such
;; ;.;;"";" .h;; *"gt"-g"tion to offer' Even a g{Psy fortune-
Eefore she will
teller needs her hand io 6. crossed' with silver
practise her art.
come along to
From time to time new thinkers and reformers
which have been placed on
add their quota to the interpretations
theoriginalteaching.AfterarelativelyshortYPu:goftimethe
all this had grown
first master would fi"nd it hard to believe that
be little doubt that
out of what h;;;J;;." taught. There can
g'aahu"*a Christ would suffer from con-
Zoroaster, tt irh,,',
could see (and,.who i.s to
siderable
"t"r-
urd d.rpo"dency t:y distortions
sav that they^l; il tl.i) the'often well-meaning
*fii"h have tiappened to their work'
origin-al thought and the
'A;;?;i"-this distortion ofrigil
It seems as though is the fate
congealing .f r"Ji"g i"to. ,do*rrl&,-Nightingale
beit.r Florence
which awaits *o.i of man's ideasl
hardened into such
revolutiorrir.i;;;;irg. H., hrmurr" teaching two world wars to
,rsid ;r., ortorgiLi-3tine that it needed
learning, fascinating in
begin to toor.r, ,i.ir grip. Branches of
ind the learned
themselv.r, b."o*. #.ur.d in strait-jackets of all
narrots who teach them bitterly ,.r.ri the appeSa}ce
" grip
ffi;;"r. Tr," religious pu.rot of the past had a fat firmer
than is possibliil;y;iot ttt.r. was no popular press or wireless
to shake their grasP. which had
We should exPect therefore an ancient religion,
once got a firm hold, ; ditr t widely
from the teaching of its
4
 verses were composed for a rural community, so that it is
unlikely that they belong to the days of the Roman empire. It
Eecms probable that they indicate a propaganda phase in the
rcligion at a time when the peasant populations of western
Europe had found that Church and State were both oppressors.
On this ground it is likely that the Vangelo, in its present form,
belongs to about the fourteenth century. 'And when the priests,
Chapter Two or the nobility shall say to you that you should put your faith in
the Father, Son and Mary, then reply: " Your God, the Father
and Mary are three devils, for the true God the Father is not
yours".' (Leland.)
Y N 1899 Charles Leland published a small book entitled to be Briefly the gospel of the witches was as follows: Tana (Diana),
L)rr-i;, or-int Gospel oJ thi Witches. This bookin apPears
some way-!Y
'Queen of Witches AII', was their goddess. Tana, the Moon, fell
rare and it s.ems probablJ that it was smothered in love with Lucifer, the Sun, who was turned out of Paradise for
vested interests. Leland was a most energetic
collector of follt-
his pride. As a result of this union of brother and sister, a
r,'" i" Italy. He maintained, apparentty'withaperiod beforethat
justification,
the daughter Aradia (or Herodias)t was born, who was the female
*u"h of what he had collected oiiginated in h1d Messiah of the witch cult. Diana, as we will call her for the
and thatlamongst other things,-h"
rise of Roman present, told her daughter that, although she was a spirit, she
"iritir"tion
resuscitated Etruscan customs and' that lhe names
of their gods
been too was born only to become a mortal and to go down to earth to
were still remembered in Tuscany' This may
-have
that the teach witchcraft (' stregonerie' ) to hu manity. The witches, ofwhom
despite the fact
much for Victorian scholars to believe, Diana was to be the first and chiei were to be taught the secret of
period of years I have
life of fotk traditio, i, very long. Over a
magic power and such arts as poisoning and crop-blasting in order
judgments on
i;;;, by painfui "xperi.rt"_ tnlt Victorian anything theythese said that they might free the downtrodden from their oppressors.
*ut,..r""r. seldom to be relied on. Scarcely true at all; When Aradia had finished her instruction on earth, she told
about the Angio_su*o, settlement in trnglTd is her pupils that she must leave them and return to heaven. If
t
,ftf,ougrt it ttiii survives in school teaching' qt*l ::^P:lltl" thuy wished for further instruction in magic, they must ask
of the tirst
that LJland's results were genuine. He was president Diana to give them the knowledge. Once a month, when the
European Folk-lore Congress in 1899' moon was full, they were to meet in some deserted spot, or in a
Leland states that he Jommissioned an Italian
witch, Madda-
heard that a gospel wood, to adore Diana. They were to be naked at their meetings
lena, to collect folk-lore of all sorts. He had
He publishgd ae a sign that they were free. They were to extinguish the lights
..r".ri"Afy she obtained a for him'
existed
"rrda translatiJn beside it. Part "oPy it is in verse and part in rnd play the game of Benevento (apparently the game played till
this, with of
is per\aps too recently by the Eskimos, who used to put out their blubber
;;;". Althoulh the work wold gospel (aangel.o)
lamps, grab the nearest woman and mate with her). After that
i1-of .r.ry-gt."t interest and forms a
Lmbracing a te?m, the they were to hold a sacred supper.
counterpart to Dr. Margaryt Muray's researches'
The ritual feast was then described. There was to be a special
The vers", Jth" Van"gelo, which upp"u. to be of considerable conjuration for each of its elements, meal, salt, honey and water.
antiquity, *.*- p..U"Uff handed down in oral form
with little
they *"t-" There was also a special conjuration for Cain (who was in some
change fo, *ury centurils; Aut at the time
::Il:::d'
suppressed classes way related to Diana and imprisoned in the moon) to tell the fate
ttre ,iitch cult was clearly the religion of the of the suppliant in water. It is not clear, however, whether a
r in the state, who were encouraged to murder their overlords and r
These She should perhaps be compared withrthe beautiful Welsh goddess Arianrod.
the christian iarmers and to b"last their crops by magic.
6
conjuration to Diana, including the baking of special-cakes,. is . Diana spun the lives of men on her wheel and Lucifer turned
puri of the same ritual, or wheiher it is a parallel version. This the wheel. She turned mice into stars and became Queen of
conjuration is of great interest, for in it several well-known Ilcaven, of witches and rain.
feuiures found in 6ther religions can be observed: 'You shall Tana, according to Leland, was the Etruscan name for Diana.
make cakes of meal, wine, ialt and honey in the shape of the 'l'here are other traditional Tuscan stories about Diana in his
crescent moon, and say: " I do not bake the bread, nor with it book, including one telling, with witchcraft embellishments, of
salt, nor do I cook the honey with the wine: I bake the body and Diana's love for trndymion. Tana had a dog for her messenger.
the blood and the soul, the ioul of Diana, that she know neither 'l'here are various charms in the book, but the main 'gospel' is
rest nor peace, and ever be in cruel suffering till she will grant given above and is evidently no more than a collection of frag-
what I request, what I do most desire, I beg it of her from my rnents of myth and ritual. The underlying belief is probably of
very h"uti! and if the grace be grant.q, O Diana! in honour of great antiquity; but, as I have said, this version does not appear
thee will I hold this feast and drain the goblet deep, we will to me to be older than the Middle Ages and much distorted by
dance and wildly leap, and if thou grantest the grace which I political propaganda.
require, then *h.t the dance is wildest, all the lamps sha-ll be Turning to Dr. Margaret Murray's publications, we find that,
exiing,rished and we will freely love!" And thus shall it be done: since much of her information comes from the reports of trials,
all sh"all sit down to supper ali naked, men and women, and the from which the witches seldom escaped with their lives, the pic-
feast over, they shall dance and sing and make music, and then ture is somewhat different from that given by the Italian' gospel'.
love in the daikness, with all lighti extinguished; for it is the There is little, if any, trace of a goddess; although modern mem-
spirit of Diana who extinguishes them, and so wiII they dance bers of the cult admit that their chief deity is female, though
and make music in her praise.' (Leland.) they may not mention her name. The evidence from the trials
After Aradia had performed her mission and Diana had re- ranges in time from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries
called her, she gave h., po*"r to grant the following gifts to her and therefore can be assumed to be more or less contemporary
d.evotees, s.rccels in love; to bless or curse with power; to con- with the 'gospel'. Since the witches may not mention her name
verse with spirits; to find hidden treasure ' or compel spirits -of now, the reason why the goddess is not found in the trial accounts
priests who had buried treasure to reveal it; to understand the is presumably the same. Magic was the main purpose of Aradia's
voice of the wind; to change water into wine; to tell fortunes teaching and since the telling of a person's name to a magician
with cards, or from the hand; to cure diseases; to change ugly gives him a hold over that person, it was clearly important for
people into beautiful; to tame wild animals; and those who ihe witches not to mention the goddess's name to their enemies.
gained her favour would be granted their wishes if they impor- This must be the explanation of the discrepancy.
tuned Aradia with the correct formula. On the other hand, there is much talk of the Devil, Beelzebub,
In Leland's gospel there follows what is evidenlly an alterna- or Lucifer, but it is quite clear that the witches regarded him as
tive text. Dia;, fo. ,.. told, was the first act of creation. She r rnan. To digress for a moment; it is interesting that the term
was the first darkness and divided herself into darkness and light' 'devil' took on an evil complexion. Zoroastet (Zatathustra) was
The light was her other half and was her brother, Lucifer' responsible for this. The various forms of 'deva'r'divus'and so on
Lucifeiwas so beautiful that Diana trembled with desire for him always referred to a good spirit. But Zoroaster in his teaching
and the desire was the Dawn. Diana and Lucifer both went down decided that all gods except Ahura Mazda must be some sort of
to earth at its creation. Diana seduced Lucifer by assuming the demon. As they had been known as'daevas', the term'devil'took
form of a cat, which got into his bed and changed back into on an evil meaning in Persia and spread westwards with Zor-
human form in the daikness. They thus became the parents of oaster's cult and Mithraism. Thus it comes about that Hindu
Aradia. gods are Persian devils, Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), Zoroaster's
8 9
 Of the actual beliefs of the witches standing trial in France,
God of All Things corresponds to the Hindu Brahma and the
Germany, Great Britain, or Scandinavia there is little trace. The
modern conception of a Universal Mind. It is something on a
witches had no hesitation in admitting that they had taken part in
different plane of thought than anything to d9 with Diana.
twas evidently the male leader of a coven, ritual dancing, sacred feasts, sexual licence and the working of
The witches' 'devil
or group of covens; the witches being organized in groups,_or harmful magic. They never said, however, what their beliefs
were, nor in whose honour their rites were performed. Dr.
,q,rldr, tf twelve with a leader. There is a connection here be-
tween a 'baker's dozen' of thirteen loaves and the baking of the
Margaret Murray rightly infers that the witches had little
cakes for the ceremonial feast. The baker's dozen does not appear
objection to being mart5ned for their faith and deduces from
earlier material the belief in the necessity for human sacrifice of
to have been thought unlucky in this country, but the number
which again the Vangelo gives no hint.
thirteen still is so regarded. This is due no doubt to the persecu-
tion of the witches-. Dr. Murray has noted the connection It does not appear as if there was much persecution of witches
before the latter part of the fourteenth century. Dr. Murray
between two covens and the Order of the Garter. We can all
think of other examples. The use of groups of thirteen members thinks that the Christian Church grew in strength until it felt it
was strong enough to suppress rival cults by force. There has
is not confined to the witches.
been little evidence from the Middle Ages that the church would
The witches' devil at the trials was frequently described as
appearing in the fornr of an animal. He was, in fact, dressed up. not have jumped at any opportunity for doing this, but a study of
the history of the times suggests an even more urgent need for
Aithougf, Dr. Murray produced little evidence of a belief in a
goddesi from the actual trials, it is clear, however, that women
the persecution. All through this time the Black Death was
Ift.r, took an important part in the cult. She quotes such notable scourging Europe with wave after wave of devastating mor-
instances as Joan of Arc and the Countess of Salisburyr in whose
tality. The number of serfs and labourers was greatly reduced
everywhere. As a result, the survivors began to appreciate their
honour the Order of the Garter was instituted. The trials them-
selves produced ample evid.ence of a similar ritual to that laid
greater value and importance and would no longer submit to the
down in Leland's Vangelo. With monotonous regularity the conditions of semi-slavery under which their fathers had
devil, the ritual feast, t[e dancing and the licence are described. laboured. In France, continually devastated by war as well as
Unlike the Vangelo, however, thL devil seems to have taken the plague, there were murderous risings, Jacqueries, ruthlessly
place of a kind of stud-bull in relation to all the women of his suppressed. In England matters came to a head in e.p. 1381.
particular coven, or group of covens. Fgt this purpose he is often The Peasants' Revolt, or Wat Tyler's Rebellion as it was called
hescribed as wearing what must have been an artificial phallus. in school history books, almost destroyed the whole fabric of
His appearance *uth"qrently disguised as that of an ox, horse, feudal England. It was particularly directed against the Church
and in eastern trngland was put down by a warrior bishop. The
dog, go"t or other beast. Dr. Margaret Murray actually pIo-
duled-in her God of the Witches a photograph of such a disguise, best general account of this is to be found in A. B. Steel's
the Dorset Ooser, a carved wooden mask with bulging eyes in a Richard,LI. Here we need only note that the chancellor, who was
also archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, was seized and
human face and with bared teeth. The face has bull's hair and
had his head cut off(this treasure is said to be still preserved!).
horns. This remarkable object was stolen from the farmer who
owned it. One feels that it may have returned to some hidden The prior of Bury was dragged from his monastery and given a
coven in the area. There is no hint of this dressing up in Leland's
parody of the trial of Christ. London was at the mercy of the
rebels. The crisis, however, passed in a remarkable manner. Dr.
Vangelo. His ritual does not contain a mention o{ any priest of
the Iult. We have the mythical story of Diana changing into a Murray has given good reasons for thinking that the Plan-
tagenets were all devotees of the witch cult. Richard, son of the
cat in order to seduce Lucifer, but the dressing up of Dianic
priests to represent animals is not even suggested in the text. Black Prince and so descended from the fourder of the Order of
lo ll
the Garter, rode out to the rebel army and persuaded them to go rivalry. When, not long afterwards, for I am convinced that Dr.
home. Even when their leader was killed in a brawl by the mayor Murray is right in her theoryr Joan of Arc united all France in
of London, they still accepted the young king as their leader. arms against the English by the same power, it was clear to the
This was a most dramatic incident. London had been seized; law rulers of the Church and State all over western Europe that the
was at an end; the feudal overlords were utterly disorganized cult must be stamped out. 'Stamp it out in the name of Chris-
and unprepared; there was nothing to stop the rebels from doing tianity, by all means. Yes, but we know that the real reason is
exactly as they liked; and yet the young king had only !o s_ay a political.'
few wtrds to ihem and they were ready to go home. The king If my reasoning of this question is correct, then it follows that
was not representing the power of law, for the rebels had cut off Leland's Vangelo almost certainly dates from about this period.
the head of th" chancelloi; not the Church, for they had cut off It is part of an infinitely older belief overlaid with political
the head of its leader who was the same man. The rebels propaganda. It does not appear to be an isolated case of its kind.
throughout the rising did in fact make the property of the If scholars are correct in their deductions, the Book of Revela-
ChurcJr their first target. The king, however, had complete con- tion is much the same kind of thing and was political propaganda
fidence and completJauthority, although he was only a boy of cloaked in religious guise, directed at the power of Rome in the
fourteen. It seems almost certain that he had this power, not reign of Nero. From what one knows of the great tolerance
because he was the lawful king, but because he was the accepted shown by the Roman Empire to a multitude of wild religions, it
head of the rival religion. seems most unlikely that it would have persecuted the early
If one studies the events in eastern trngland, where they have christians for practising such a mild faith, unless it had seen
been worked out in some detail, it is obvious that the movement something very dangerous in it. The Book of Revelation can
was largely anti-clerical. It was the 'learningof the clerks' which be easily explained as a very violent cryptic instigation of the
was buini with great rejoicing in the market place at 9r*- churches to plot in secret for the overthrow of Rome. The druids
bridge. 'Away with the learning_of the clerks. Away with. it!' too were muzzled and largely stamped out, not because they
yelJd the crowd, as they hurled the university muniments into practised human sacrifice, which was a commonplace idea in the
ihe bonfire. There was nothing vindictive about it; although the ancient world, all that was necessary was to send out an order for
clerks were bad landlords. It was their learning, that is their it to stop; but because they were bitterly hostile to Rome and
religious books, which the rioters wanted to destroy. At any rate trained the young men to disregard the value of their lives. They
this-is how the picture presents itself to me. (I published an assured them that if they died in battle they would be more quickly
account of finds of weapons lost at this time in Merlin's Island.) freed from the boredom of frequent rebirth and so reach paradise
when the feudal powers recovered from their shock, and it the sooner. In recently conquered lands, such a teaching was a
must be remembered that many living knights had seen what very great danger.
devastation could be wrought by the English long bow on the We can then, I think, assume that Leland's Vangelo and Dr.
finest cavalry in Europe at Cr6cy and Poictiers, they acted Yjth Murray's trial evidence are more or less contemporary and that
ruthless forcl. The king became a boy again in the power of his it is reasonable to use the two together to form a picture of
councillors and his promises to the rebels were overruled. But the witch cult at about e.n. t4oo. Stripped of tirades against
the memory of what had happened was not forgotten by Church oppressors, the main tenets of the religion appear to be these:
and State. The menace of the other religion had to be removed. The great deity who made the universe and ordered the lives of
Not only did it prove capable of physical force, but its devotees rnen was female. She was Diana who, to the Greek world, was
were all magicians and could blast man, beast and the whole pro- known as Artemis. Diana was at first invisible, but she created
t ess of fertility. I suggest that this was a far more powerful llght in the form of a male consort, Lucifer. He was represented
cause of the subsequent persecution than simple religious by the sun, the greatest light known to men. Diana, as queen of
t2 t3
heaven and darkness, was represented by the greatest object in horns and had to be slapped at intervals on his rump with the flat
the night sky, the moon. a chna of the union of Light and Dark- of a spade. Still, the burials were found and examined. They were
,r"., *"", fvfugi" and was known as Aradia. Aradia was sent to earth not Vikings, for they had been buried through a layer of
to teach this-art to mankind. That is, she was, in the opinion of medieval rubbish. I have wondered whether they were some of
her devotees, a personage, known in Hindu religion as an avatar, the unfortunate prisoners who were to have been shipped across
who taught them how io harness magic PoYgr. Aradia, at some the Atlantic as slaves after the battle of Sedgemoor, but are
far-off tIm", may have been as much an historical persgr. u: known to have been dumped somewhere on the way. In any case,
Christ, Xrisfrna, or Buddha. It is possible that her- original Dollar and I were left with time on our hands till the boat from
message was not unlike theirs; but can we be sure that there was Bideford called again to take us off. Amongst other activities,
any such person? which included an attempt at air-photography from a kite, it was
Mugic has an ugly name to those who have seen black magic suggested that we should experiment with dowsing. We worked
at woik among primitive peoples. Others think that it is com- out fields of force round a sheet of corrugated iron lying on the
pletely bogus irri ro such po*.t exists. But magic is simply.the ground, which were similar to those made by u bar magnet.
,rt. oi poi"tt of the mind which are not a_s yet understood by Then, as I was rather good with the thing, Dollar proposed that
sciencel Magic and miracle are the same thiry. Telepathy is a I should try to locate volcanic dykes, which passed through the
form of ma[ic which is becoming scientifically respectable' It slate rocks at the south end of the island. These dykes, being
was complet[ly taboo among scientists, till certain recent experi- covered with humus and grass, were invisible on top of the
ments tho*.d that there *is something in it. Scientists did not island. Dollar blindfolded me and, as he had no occasion to wish
see how it could exist, therefore it did not exist; although me ill, I walked quite happily along the path on top of the cliffs
thousands of their fellows knew that it existed and it can be holding the twig. Every now and then the twig would turn
observed in use every day on the sea-shore among-flocks of violently in my hands for a few paces and then stop. When this
wading birds. Anyon! who has had much to do with animals had happened several times, Dollar stopped me, took off the
knowJfar more about telepathy than can be learnt by gu-essing handkerchief and said, 'You have located every one of the dykes.
games with packs of cards. But you cannot -measure human If I had known you could do that I should never have brought
Sbservation ind therefore it is not scientific. Scientists can be down a magnetometer from Cambridge.' Now, this was magic,
pretty blind from obstinacy at times. but it was also a scientific experiment. Since that time I have
' Prlcisely the same story concerrls the faculty dowsing, of been successful on several occasions in locating ancient ditches
-o{ and graves hidden in the chalk. I am no expert in the art, but I
which watir divining is a branch. This was one of the magic arts
given by Aradia to h-er devotees. Most people can dowse, if they am fully convinced that Aradia's witches when properly trained
f,ro* hlw to do it. If they carurot do it, there is probabty lo*" could have found their buried treasure.
fault in the electrical system of their bodies. But water divining Other faculties of a magical nature are slowly becoming
was an impossibility, an absurdity; it could not concern science, respectable. Faith healing and healing at a distance by resonance
even if people were using it and finding w-ater by its means every are being widely practised. Not long ago my mother said to me,
day. Now irachines are 6eing used to do the work of the diviner's 'I don't get much rheumatism now, I go on the box'. 'What on
roi. Y""rs ago, I was askedlo go to Lundy Island to investigate earth is that?' I asked. 'Oh I gave a spot of my blood to a woman
some burials"which were suppoied to be Vikings. I went wlth a in Oxford and she puts me on the box and I am soon right again.'
geologist, named Dollar, who had been working on the island 'But this is pure magic, Ma,' I said incredulously. Since then I
iot .o--" time. The burials were duly located in a small grass have read some of the literature on the subject. It is magic with-
field enclosed by stone walls and occupied by a-young liu' |Je out a shadow of doubt, but magic conducted with an elaborate
disapproved oflur activities, tore up clods of earth with his scientific apparatus. How it works, I have not the slightest idea,
L4 l5

I
but it has clearly come to stay. Of course the greatest exponent
promiscuity at the meetings, were viewed with the detachment
which is accorded to naked sadhus in India today. These sadhus
of this kind of t[ring in all history was Christ. He had apparently
insist on nudity as being essential to mental freedom in the same
very little difficulty in teaching other_people- to do it, and the
prol.tt of teaching does not appear to have taken long. He-used way as it was ordained for the witches in the Vangelo. Nudity
to get very urgry *ith them when they lost confidence in them- meant little in medieval Europe. Nobody wore night clothes in
selies andfailed 1o do it. There was no years of training in Yoga.
bedl and housing conditions were so cramped that everyone
It appears to have been no more than complete trust in -your must have been quite accustomed to the sight of a naked human
body. The argument that nudity added to the licentiousness of
po*-* to do it. If there was any further teaching necessary, !t-\as
uith.t been lost or deliberately smothered. The power could b-e the proceedings can be looked at from the opposite angle. The
used for both good and ..ril. St. Peter's performance with naked bodies of elderly witches and wizards, doubtless un-
washed for a considerable time, must have exerted a depressing
Ananias and Sapphira was as perfect an example of black magic
effect to no small degree. The answer given by modern witches
as could be found anywhere in Africa. St. Paul's confidence was
evidently so great that he learnt how to heal by himself. I uy to this nudity business is that clothes hamper the generation of
magic power.
not conce*.Jh.t" with how the power was generated, but only
Power was needed for the main purpose of the meetings. This
to show that here is perfectly good evidence for the existence of
another of the faculties taught by Aradia to her devotees. Just as
was to increase the productivity of man, beast and field by
the Apostles could turn from white magic to black, so apparently
sympathetic magic. It was only later, when the religion was
facing dangerous enemies, that its devotees turned to the use of
could^the witches. Once again we can see a parallel between the
black magic against them. To understand the witch cult, it is
persecution of the early-Christia* by Nero and that of the
necessary to go back before the persecution, to a time when
iit.h.r by the Christians in the Middle Ag9t. Nero's goYeln- kings, great nobles and even high dignitaries of the Christian
ment apparently took little notice of the Christians until the
Church, not only accepted it as a matter of course, but even seem
Jewish'revolt against Rome. When, however, this broke out, to have practised its rites.
with a crisis in ihe terrible siege of Jerusalem, which'Were started in
a.p. 67, a violent persecution of Christians ensued. they To the summary of the Dianic beliefs which we have already
all or"i the world for their magic? Were they not made, it is necessary to add the role of the male priest. Diana was
not famed
known to destroy their enemies by its power? Were not most of clearly represented at the meetings by u woman, or all the
them these were busy crucifying all their prisoners on women present. One would have expected the priest to rep-
Jews-who
the walls oflJerusalem? If the secret police had seen a copy of tlre resent Lucifer, but instead we find him dressed up as some
'Revelations', the disruptive and dangerous character of the animal or other. There is clearly something here which does not
movement would have appeared obvious to them. It is a curious
fit into the combined picture we have already formed. By no
piece of irony that the Church, which had suffered so much from
stretch of imagination could this animal devil be thought to
persecution itself, should have been the organization wlich represent the sun. To look for him we shall have to go far back
ireated the witches with even greater brutality and shows how in time, before the days of churchmen burning witches at the
terribly it had wandered from the teaching of its great master' stake and witches trying to blast the productivity of their
enemies, and see what can be learnt from a brief examination of
It is only fair to add that it was quite as ready to burn its own
the worship of Diana in the ancient world of the Classics. Before
memberi at the stake, if they happened to differ slightly from the
we do this, however, there is one important point which must be
official view in dogma.
stressed. It is very difficult to expect country people to believe
The worship olDiana never seems to have been viewed with
any disfavour in Roman times. The po-ints.which strike modern
in a great Father God without a Great Mother also. The idea
oblervers as being particularly unpleasing, the nudity and
1 Although pictures exist of bishops wearing their mitres when asleepl
l6
makes no sense to those whose lives are bound up with the tence of this in Homer, when he speaks, for instance, of Zeus as
ireeding of animals. Townsfolk miglt Scce* the idea, but not the Thunderer. At one time you might not mention the name
countryiren. Fortunately for Christianity-, P^op9 Gregory had Zeus except in secret. When a Roman asked a Caledonian,
observ-ed this and had provided a loophole for his priesthood. through an interpreter, the name of his chief deity, he did not get
Such pagan customs as were too deep_rooted to be removed the real name in reply. He got something like 'the Forest One'
were iol" turned round to look like Christian ones. For cen- or'the Long-haired One'.'When he asked the name of a neigh-
turies therefore there was nothing strange in a man believing bouring tribe, the answer was'the Newcomers'or'the People
both in the Christian teaching and in that of Aradia. of the Stag' or 'the Hunters'. I{nowing no better, the Classical
authors wrote these answers down and they have since become
One of the great difficulties which face anyone- who attempts
to distorted by being turned from Celtic into Latin, from Latin into
*ru,o"l p.Jbl.*. of the ancient world is that of names' A Greek and back again, with copyists' slips to make it all easier. I
iriU. *uy U" known by one name in one century and anothe.l in often wonder how near the truth are the accounts brought back
the tribe; by anthropologists from backward tribes. Things are made up to
the next. one author *uy use the name of the rulers of
by its neighbours; a third please them. Names may only be mentioned indirectly. Customs
*ort., speak of it by the name used
of
,p""f. ii Uy a kind 6f portmant_e1u geqgraphical term. None are invented. What sort of answer might be expected from an
"f be the rr"*" by which it spoke to itself of itself. In a
iir"r" need Irishman in Kerry to the question 'Who may marry your
g;;r,i"n all may h-1v" The rulers may now P cousin's husband's niece?' 'Ach! that will be Micky's Pat from
**S-:d' " Ballybunion.' Neither boy nor girl happens to exist, but one
f,iff"r.r,t clan, or iamily; the tiibe may have migrated and. be
."U"a ,o*"thi.rg else Uy its new neig-hbours anditsgeographical must be polite to strangers and this is the kind of story that
,"iti"g may be ."o*pt.t"ly different. It may now be known by the seems to please them.
;;;#;oi of its "irief a.ity,9r, if it has formed a new alliance, In spite of these difficulties we will make some attempt at the
by Jome group name like 'the A11 Men' or'the Men of the study of Diana from the classical sources. I do not think it is my
ai.;;;. I fr..,tioned this difficulty when Ity1"F to study thetrouble
Picts fault if the result is somewhat confusing. I will begin with the
ii fn, Painted. Men. Now w" faced with the same Rornan version, because Leland's Tana comes from Italy and it
"re antiquity
when dealing with gods and goddesses. The deities of seems sensible to make a start in that area. Diana to the Romans
known was the chaste huntress and on her images she carries a bow and
have a very great nirmber of names. Not only were th.y
often had at least is often accompanied by a stag. But Diana had very many differ-
by differe.ri i"*.r in different places, but they
tfrree different phases, old, middle-aged and ygyg, *hl+ were ent names and different attributes in the Roman world. 'Great is
uti t ro*" Uy dif"rent names in one p1u".... Added to this, con- Artemis of the Ephesians' shouted the angry crowd as reported
tended to add religions, pi.!..q up all in the Acts of the Apostles. That was Diana's Greek name. In
il;r like"the Romans
or", their empire, to such of their own gods who had some Egypt they would have shouted for Isis; in Palestine for Ash-
points in common. This is all terribly complicated and
cannot be toreth; in Ireland for Danu, Macha, Badb, Morrigan, or the
really disentangled in a-lifetime of study.-To mention two,
and Cailleach, or any of twenty-six other names. In Carthage her
pr"U""UfV the sime goddesses who come into
our stud], Isis is narne was Tanit. Diana had many different tales told of her birth
'said
to hur" had ten"thousand names; the Irish Badb when ques- and parentage. She was frequently believed to be three persons,
tioned in a mythical tale gaYe thirty-on1?f.htT own' Not one of Diana, Proserpina and Hecate. As such she was known as Tri-
Badb,s names is probablf the one-by *IiC.h she
was known in formis. She was Cynthia, Delia, Luna, Orthia, Aricia, Agrotera,
secret to her woishipp.*. It was like the business of not men- Selene, Cybele, Lucina and many more besides. Sometimes she
Scottish fishing-boat. You mentioned was Proserpina and sometimes Ceres, her mother, was Proser-
ii""i"S salt in ,r, "rri*oast exis-
it in some roundabout way. There are traces of the former pina. Jupiter, the Greek Zeus, was usually regarded as her father.
l8 t9
 a matronly lady with at least three, and often more, tiers of bare
Diana was goddess of the moon and many surviving_ statues breasts, superimposed like turrets on a battleship. She has an
show her witli a sickle moon above her hair. Her brother was apron covered with the representations of animals. On her head
Apollo, who was linked with the sun. Cicero tells that Apollo she carries either the fagade of a temple, or a castellated city.
came from the land of the Hyperboreans. According to Egyptian This is the great mother of all, the giver of fertility to man and
mythology, however, Apollo was Horus and the son of Isis and
Osiris, the moon and the sun.
As Hecate, Diana was the goddess of magic and represented
as having a woman's body with three heads. These were the
heads of"a horse, a dog and a boar. We shall hear more of this
later. Cross-roads were sacred to Hecate, who was there known
as Trivia, the goddess of the three ways. I know of no story in
classical mythotogy which might suggest thaj Apollo was in-
volved in i love itruir with Diana. On the other hand, despite
the fact that she was the goddess of chastitY, she was also the
guardian of women in childbirth. In spite of having special per-
irission from Jupiter to remain unmarried, she had love affairs
with the giant Orion, with Endymion and with the nature god
Pan. OriJn and Endymion do not concern us further, but Pan
with his horned head and goat legs is another matter.
Diana, as Proserpina, was the daughter of Jupiter and Ceres.
Some say that Jupiter himself was so taken with her beauty that
he turnei himsef into a serPent and seduced her. Later she was
carried offby Pluto, god of the Underworld. At the intercession
of her mothlr she was permitted to spend half the year above
ground with Ceres and half of it with Pluto below. Proserpina or
Fersephone, as she was called by the Greeks, as Queen of Hell Fig. t.
*"r titponsible for the deaths of men. Her return to the world (a) Sketch of wooden carving at the base of a Vancouver Island totem
above brought about the return of spring, Atropgs_ was her pole. This shows the marriage of the totem bear to a woman.
messeng"t *d sent to snip a hair from the heads of those who Quite a number of such carvings exist. Some similar carving was
had been marked for death. Proserpina again had many names probably the early form of Greek Artemis and Celtic Artio.
such as Libitina, Core, Deois, Theogamia, Anthesphoria and (b) Artemis of Ephesus drawn from a Roman statue found in that
Liberia. city (after Franz Mitner). Numerous similar statues have sur-
Turning to the Greek world, we now have to investiSlt" vived.
Artemis. lrtemis and Diana were thought to be one and the beast and the protector of his cities. The statues show how
same goddess by the ancients. Yet, on the face of thingg, no two greatly a religious conception can change through the centuries
persoialities could be much more different, provided they wgre for, although these images show the type of Artemis which was
of th" same sex. For Artemis in her Ephesian guise is a 'muckle venerated at the time of St. Paul, earlier Greek accounts describe
wife'. Her statues, two of which have recently been recovered the goddess as the protector of chastity (Fig. t (b)).
from the site of her world-famous temple and of which At a still earlier time she was evidently a totem bear. It seems
other examples have been found as far west as Marseilles, show 2l
qo
 than real. Underlying the innumerable varieties of ritual and the
to be reasonably clear that the chaste goddess of the Greek
bewildering mass of names were only a few real beliefs. one of
settlers in Asia Minor had become united with the personality of
of that lost these was that of the great mother. She had created the universe
Ashtoreth, the great fertility goddess area' and had
and she ordered the lives of men from the cradle onwards. Men
her original chiracter in the process. She was not the great
might call her by different names; they might worship her as a
mother-to the early Greeks, but became so to their descendants;
girl to obtain success in their loves; they might do so at middle
shipwrecked sailois had once been sacrificed to her in ancient
age to bring success in more mundane affairs; or they might
Griece. Now Artemis, like Isis, was the protector of shipping.
venerate her in old age to ward offdeath as long as possible. She
She had no recorded consort at Ephesus and her priests were
represented all these things and controlled them, as she con-
eunuchs, known apparently as Essenes. Though she was said by
trolled sun and moon, rain and drought, wind and sky and sea. [t
some to have been hostile io Aphrodite, the Venus of the Greeks,
was generally recognized that she had to have a male consort,
yet a statue of the goddess has been found in the excavations
but he was of far less moment. only the woman could bring
ir"ut her temple. This is all a far cry from human sacrifice to a
forth children, so only a female deity could bring forth the world-.
wooden figure of a totem bear and shows how ve-rY difficult it is
The father was incidental.
to form an-y opinion of a particular deity. The trghesian Artemis
It seems probable that by far the most difficult area in which
was conn."t.d with the moon; the Artemis of Homer's day was
to study these old beliefs is in that eastern half of the Mediter-
not. The Artemis of St. Paul's day is apparently the Ashtoreth,
the Ishtar of the Car- ranean where most has been recorded about them. Counter-
Queen of Heaven, of the Old Testament, clockwise from Egypt, through Asia Minor, round to Greece
fraginians. Ishtarwentdownto visit the Lord of the Underworld
and, as Dr. Gardner records in a1d on to ltaly, invasion after invasion had taken place century
likJProserpina of the Romans
after century for thousands of years. Each one had some influencL
an existing myth told by modern witches like their goddess.
on the religious beliefs of the peoples involved in it. The popula-
The RomuL Piot"rpina therefore appears to be the Asiatic form
tions were mixed so completely that layer upon layer of belief
of Artemis and Proserpina is another name for Diana.
was deposited and the degree of amalgamation of ideas varied
Ishtar, Isis and Io appear to be the same goddess, who, how-
from district to district and country to country. Some blending
ever, was Diana in CtLt" and Venus in Cyprus. Like the old
of ideas has taken place everywhere in the world; but nowhere
Greek Artemis, the Egyptian Isis had once been a totem animal
to such a marked extent as in the eastern half of the ancient
before she became a Gi"ut Mother goddess. In this case the
world. Egypt alone suffered less than other lands. The climax
animal was a cow. Isis was greatly revered in Egypt, but some
was reached when Rome became mistress of almost the whole of
say that she was imported into Rome as Bellona. Bellona, how-
the known world. All roads led to Rome and every religion
ever, was a *ut goddess and in Rome was the sister of Mars'
travelled along them. To try to evaluate these religions from the
Isis, however, *ui u mild and gentle goddess in Egypt. Artemis
works of Roman writers must be as hard a task as anyone could
also at one stage had been a goddess of victolY. As far as we can
wish; yet it is on the works of such writers that we have to lean
make anything at all of these frightful complications, it appears
heavily when trying to deal with matters further from the centre
that this Diana-Artemis-Isis figure must have been goddess of
of disturbance.
everything, of life and death, peace an{ war, fertilit-y - and
A good example of what could happen to old cults when Rome
dearih. Men worshipped her in the particular guise which huP
took a hand in the matter is the case of Bellona. There was an
pened to appeal to ttrem. It is easy to see why Isis was said to
ancient Sabine goddess named Nerio. The Romans recognized
iru,o" had fen thousand names. We have quite enough in this
her as Duellona, who later became known as Bellona. When
chapter already. I could easily add many more to it!
'ihe chaos and confusion which confront us when we try to Sulla was in Cappadocia, the local war goddess known as
Bellona appeared to him and told him to return to Rome and
und.erstand these deities in the classical world is more apparent
22 28
drench it in the blood of his enemies. He proceeded to carry out rcsult of such a union was invariably fertile. This form of myth is
the goddess's estimable suggestion. Sulla's proscription shocked nomething to do with totemism, but few scholars are agreed on
Rorie by its ferocity; but, as a result of its success, the rites of what totemism is. Totemism is some mystic relationship be-
the Cappadocian Bellona were instituted in Rome and added to tween a group of men and a particular species of animal or even
those of the original Nerio who, ironically enough, had once plant. But the exact relationship has defied scholarly definition.
been equated with Virtus. And well it might do so. It seems to be a kind of hangover from
Enough has been said to show that we are likely- to become much earlier times, when men are thought to have really believed
completEly mesmerized if we continue to search the classical that they were physically related to animals. I find this a bit
mytirology for the origin of the witch cult. Each god^and goddess difficult to believe, for how could a man have regarded a lobster
has suchimultitud" of .,umes, and such a variety of rites, that a as a blood relation, unless he had already read Darwin's Origin
lifetime of study would not reveal a clear-cut picture. If it did so, of Speciesl Totemism was an indefinable magico-religious idea
it would probably do no more than reflect the idea which hap and the totem animal was in a sense worshipped. It could give
pened to be upp"imost in the mind of the man undertaking the help to men belonging to its own particular brand and they must
search. We cin, however, usually detect a family group of not kill it without permission. Why they should have thought
deities, a mother, father and child, to whom is often added a that it would ever willingly give such permission is another
wicked uncle who murders the father or carries offthe daughter. puzzle. Many scholars have noted evidence for totemic beliefs in
The heroine of the mythical story is the mother. These mythical the Upper Palaeolithic period of at least lg,Ooo years ago and
personages and their story were clearly invented to account for the Rev. A. C. Armstrong, in his Folk-lore of Birds, has recently
ih. r"u.6nal changes in nature. The seasonal changes., of c9-ur:e' drawn attention to this again.
differed from plu.. to place and the mythical story varies with the This totem concept was very strong and widespread. It
geographical settin 8, atthe time the storywas constructed, of the probably went at one time to every corner of the inhabited world.
iribE who invented it. The climatic conditions are reflected in the When we find ancient European tribes called Chatti, or Epidii,
descriptions of the natures of the deities themselves. In a harsh we can be reasonably certain that their totem animals were once
climate the gods are naturally fiercer and less civilized than in cats or horses respectively. It is also highty probable that many
an area whJre there was little appreciable seasonal variation. of the animals which appeared as heraldic blazons on the shields
Where there was little seasonal change, the carrying off of a of medieval knights were once the totems of the families which
Proserpina would not occur in the myth. If this carrying-offmyth bore these on their arms. I hope to show later on that this is not
should be found amongst a people living in an area of little a fantastic suggestion; neither is it disregarded by some of the
seasonal change, it is reasonable to suppose that the story came experts of the College of Heralds.
there from anirea where the change was marked. We can surely As civilization slowly developed and spread over wider areas,
be fairly certain then that the witch cult, with its myth -9{ the totemism began to be replaced by beliefs of a different kind.
goddess going down to visit the king of the underworld, did not Gods and goddesses came to be imagined in human form. In this
originate in a land like Mesopotamia orEgypt. anthropomorphism man conceived gods to be made in his image
i,nother point, which colnes out clearly in the classical and not vice versa. Forces of nature and celestial bodies were
mythology, ir the frequency of myths in-which both gods and gods and they were like men. The changing of a god, or goddess,
goaa"stJJ change themselves into animals. The most common into an animal seems to me to be a symbolic way of saying, 'Our
iorrn of such myiht consists of a goddess changinghers-e-lf into an tribal deity is really a god, or a goddess, produced by the union
animal to avoid the amorous aitentions of a god. This simple of the animal which is our totem with the great mother, or great
trick is always detected. The god turns himself into the father', as the case may be. I do not think it necessary to assume,
priate male animal and. succeeds in seducing the goddess. The as does Robert Graves in his Greeh Myths, that there was
24 25
necessarily a human marriage of the priestesses of some local superseded by a belief in gods of human form. when it was
cult with the men of an invading tribe. All that was necessary b-egun it was still necessary to explain to the people in general
was to explain to simple people why their totem animal was the relationship between the two beliefs in a rituafperfoimance.
being replaced by something less easily seen, but more human. since it-is generally the male priest who is dressed up, it is
It was a change which was not always completely caried out. surely the Great Mother who represents the new idea. sh" i,
Pan always retained his horns and goat legs. Demeter with her taking the place of the old totem animal and is the more impor-
horse's head is another; while Hecate with her three different tant figure. since it is the kings who are killed and not their
animals' heads clearly represents the amalgamation of three sorts, the same conditions hold good. Had a male god been "or-
of
different totems, each with its separate beast. Sometimes the greater importance, such conditions would havJ been un-
totem animal evidently did not attain the status of a deity. Cen- necessary. It was the Great Mother who needed a frequent
taurs and satyrs are examples of this type of mythical creation. renewal of virile consorts. A Father God would have requiied a
Most mermaids belong to the groupr but Artemis in one phase succession of wives. 'We can then, I feel, be reasonably certain
had the form of a mermaid, half woman and half fish. that the cult came into being when the female principle was
The changing of totem into deity was found all over the old recognized,as-being the most imporrant thing in-tribai belief.
world; in India, Egypt, Ass;nia, Greece, Italy and the Celtic That is, maleshadnot yet asserted their right tJorder the doings
lands. The marriage of the totem animal to human being is even of the tribe, or their right to succeed to the rulership of it. Tf,e
found in the mythology and art of the North American Indians oygarlzation was matriarchal and matrilineal. Such an organiza-
(Fig. r (r)). Since myths apPear to be the oral counterparts of tion had already vanished from Homeric Greece aEout a
religious rites, we must surely assume that wherever we find a thousand years before the birth of Christ. But there is ample
myth of this shape-changing kind, then there was once a religious evidence from the Greek myths that it had once existed there.
performance in which men, or women, dressed ,P in the skins of Two thousand years later there were still traces of the mother,s
the former totem animal and went through the performance greater importance in parts of Scotland and lreland.
which the myth describes. Here then is the clue to why the devil
of the witches, the priest of the coven, appeared so frequently in According to Dr. Gardner, modern witches believe in reincarna-
animal guise. He represented the totem animal marrying the tion. Their prayers are directed to the Lord of the underworld,
Great Mother. Since such marriages were always fertile, fer- who is responsible for arranging where and when they shall be
tility for the tribe must naturally result. bgT- ag4l. They naturally wish to be born again in a group
This surely brings us a little nearer to the reason why such which will contain those persons whom they loved in thiJexis-
curious rites survived for so long a time. They were once the t_ence. According to their mythology, their great goddess went
universally accepted method by which general productivity had down to see this Lord of the Underworld ind they eventually
to be obtained. The priest simply had to be a'stud-bull', other-
wise if crops failed, or if cattle miscarried, he would be blamed
became lovers.
.rrr: Qg""1 of Heaven and All Living Things
was mated to the Lord of the Dead and so could presumably
for not performing the needful magic. In the same w&], kings, influence him as to the reincarnation of her devotee. This is thl
who bore the same responsibility over a large area, had, as Sir story of Pluto and Proserpina, but with a difference. There is no
James Fraser and Dr. Margaret Murray have amply demon- reference in the classical story to the reincarnation of proser-
strated, to be destroyed after a period of years, before their pina's devotees and we have no means of telling whether re-
power of productivity, invested in them by the gods, began to incarnation was ever part of their faith.
w*e, and the prosperity of the people as a whole suffer with it. Reincarnation is a very ancient faith. Numerous scholars have
The witch cult then seems to me to have originated at a time seen indications of it in the burial customs of the Upper palaeo-
when the belief in totemism was on the wane and was being lithic period in Europe. The male skeleton found in pavisland
26 27
Cave, on the Gower peninsula, known as the Red Lady of that no doubtful beliefs should reach their congregation and
Pavisland, had been reddened with ochre. This is thought to interfere with their revenue.
indicate that he was exPected to be born again of a ruddy hr,re,, o1 Whether brought by merchants, or immigrants, the belief in
at least in his war paint. After centuries of repression, the belief reincarnation, or rather transmigration, had reached north-
in reincarnation is beginning to be held once more today- It was western_ Europe two thousand years ago and probably long
a widely-held belief of the early Christians, which was declared before that. If we may believe the traditions recorded in thl
to be u h.r"ty in the sixth century. Caesar tells us that the Triads of the welsh Barddas, the belief reached Britain in the
Druids of Gall believed in reincarnation of the type known fifth century before christ, less than a hundred years after the
as transmigration. This includes the possibility of a. person time of Pythagoras. The immigration of the cwmry, described
being reboln in animal form. Scholars over the centuries have in the Triads as arriving in eastern England about 45O s.c.,
been puzzled how a belief which they thought had been in- corresponds in a remarkable way with the immigration of the
vented by Pythagoras could have reached western EurlP! b.lo.-" earliest iron-using peoples into that part of the country. This
the Roman- conlquest. This was not the only belief which has only been made clear by archaeological research during this
caused surprise. facitus was unable to understand how it came present generation. The Triads were published in t}6q,
about thatpeoples living round the Baltic should be worshipping long before such research was thought of. This is a strong point
Isis. in favour of the tradition being genuine, despite the criticism of
In the wnlr modern scholars are surprised at finding
same victorian scholars. The internal evidence of the Triads them-
many beliefs umong the North American Indians which were selveb makes it very improbable that they could be anything but
widely held in the old world. There was, in fact, never any great genuine. There are, for instance, several versions of the Triads
obstruction to the spread of ideas around the world once man had in one manuscript, each with a different amount of interpolation
learnt to build a boat. There is no long sea passage from Asia to from Christian teaching. The connection between the Bardic,
North America and at one time it was shorter than it is today. that is Druidic, beliefs and the Hindu Upanishads is obvious.
On his feet, or with a boat, man could go anywhere. With a Several of the documents are stated to have been copied from a
horse and a sail he could go faster. Where a man went, his ideas collection which was destroyed with the originals by Roundhead
went too. It is as simple is that. You do not need a mass migy- soldiery in the Great Civil war. This makes the comparatively
tion to carry an idea, whether it is the shape of a tool, or a belief recent copying of Indian beliefs most improbable, even if anyone
in a god. A single man can camy it. Whether he will be believed had thought it worth his trouble to do so. There are bogus parts
is another matter and often depends on vested interests among of the collection known as Barddas, but the Triads are not these
his hearers. If such a man, with a higher religious concePt, parts. We may, I think, accept them as being genuine Welsh
arrives in a tribe where there is no established priesthood and tradition of very great age.
which practises nothing but some simplg form of magic, E *ill In the Triads there is not the slightest trace of anything con-
have a good chance of implanting his belief on that tribe. In the nected with the worship of Diana. They are on an entirely
course if g.r.tations too, he stands a good chance of being different plane of thought and show a belief in the progress of the
remembere-cl as a god i particularly if his cultural level in other soul from life to life, down into the Abyss and up again, which
ways is higher than that of his hosts. If, however, he comes to a is surprisingly like many modern conceptions. stripped of their
.tribe wheie there are witch doctors, or priests, with their food to Welsh terms they might have come from a book by Aldous
win, he is just as likely to find himself in the stockpot-unless he Huxley. If then these Triads are a true reflection of Druidic
is very 'quick on thL draw'. Some worshippers of Artemis belief, brought in by the first Welsh-speaking colonists of
pro*pily sacrificed to the goddess all shipwrecked sailors who Britain, the Diana worship of the witches comes from an entirely
iell into their hands. No doubt her priestly officials saw to it different source. The belief in reincarnation may be a later
29
addition to it, derived from Druidism, or some other cult. The way-s for some four thousand years, but with a diffusion of ideas,
Dianic religion represented a stage in the transition from ripples of thought, which spread to a limit and there stuck till
totemism to anthropomorphism. The religion of the witches such time as they could be replaced by something of a higher
was mainly this, but now includes a belief in reincarnation, nature.
which may have been contemporary or may have come from The former head-hunters have now uldertaken a remarkable
some other cult. experiment in evolution. As a result of prolonged contact with
I have mentioned the great difficulty experienced in trying to peoplel more developed culture during the Hitler war, th.y
-of
disentangle the beliefs of the classical world, where so much have deliberately adopted a modern *ry of life at one bound,
mixing of populations has occurred. It seems that it ought to be instead of advancing step by step. They have moved their
easier to make the attempt farther from this confused centre. villages, to break traditional ties; adopted i system of represen-
Religions and ideas spread like ripples. The Middle East is like tative councils; put on western clothes and cut their mops of
the middle of a pond, into which boys throw stones one after the fuzly hair._Magic and head-hunting are replaced by wireless and
other. The stones seldom land in the same spot. In the middle wrist-watches. The idea of such a change *is apparently
all is muddled water. Farther out, however, there are clear entirely their own. Th"y have been caughi in a fresli *uuu of
rings of ripples. They run through each other, but it is perfectly ideas and accepted them without regret or sentiment for their
easy to watch any particular series of rings. It ought to be the former adherence to the ways of frehistoric Jericho. such a
same with these rings of thought. Some will be bigger than change was far more drastic than thai carried out by the Japanese
others and run farther across the world. Some will reach at the end of the nineteenth century and probiuty trre most
isolated corners and stay there. Out near the limits of their remarkable experirnent ever conducted by group oi m"n.
" main problem. we
this digression we can return to our
spread, far from the place where the stones of ideas were thrown ^After
in, it should be possible to see the ripples individually. At any will try to pick up the threads of the inquiry n.rf the edges of
rate, there is no harm in trying to do so. the old world and not at its heart; but we will use any inflrma-
Here is an example. A few years ago, during the excavations tion which seems to be helpful from the central area.
at prehistoric Jericho, a heap of human skulls was found. They The celts were spread in a great curve, from spain in the
had been plastered over with clay, which was moulded carefully west to Galatia in Asia Minor in the east, at the 6ack of the
to represent a human face, and cowrie shells had been set in the Mediterranean civilizations. The Greeks called these peoples
eye-sockets with the slits outwards to represent eyes. Within the Keltoi; the Romans called them Gauls. How far they *"i"
present century, precisely the same treatment was given to homogerreous people, nobody can say. Theories based on"
human skulls by the head-hunting tribes of New Guinea. There archaeological discoveries in central Europe probably explain
th.y were often placed at the foot of a rude wooden figure, or the immediate origins of celtic tribes at i lite stagl in iheir
suspended from one. It seems most improbable that these two development, but hardly seem adequate to account for their
examples of treating a skull in this way were independent in- numbers when once they began to move across the ancient
ventions. There is, in fact, considerable evidence for head- *9.1d. The- origin of the celts is intimately bound up with the
hunting far back in the Palaeolithic period. We must surely origin of the great family of peoples known variously as the
assume that the rite in New Guinea was a survival of a custom {ryans, or the Indo-Europeans. The language and customs of
once practised in ancient Jericho. The head-hunters too were in the Aryan conquerors of India and t[e -celts in westenr
qyrgne
much the same stage of cultural development; yet their physical {o not appear to have differed to any marked extent.
type appears to have been very different. It seems clear then Their religious beliefs were apparently much the same also.
that we are not dealing with a racial migration to distant lands, where and when all this came from is still something which is in
where the people remained and continued in their traditional the guessing stage. we have to picture somethingl very long
90 3l
time ago; some area where there was a highly intelligent group
of men, who worked out systems of society, land tenure, farm-
ing and religious belief of a freer and more imaginative kind
than anything produced in the huddled primitive cities of the
east. Their haunting pipe tunes, which still thrill us today,
coming across the waters of some quiet loch in the evening,
went to India as well as to the Western Ocean's coasts. Their
love of horses will never die as long as there are horses for
them to enjoy. It is not surprising then to learn from Roman
sources that they worshipped the Celtic Artemis, whose rule
covered the whole animal world and to whom the hunter must
make his offering before he killed any beast. Although the native
name for Artemis is not given in classical accounts, yet inscrip-
tions to a bear goddess 'Artio'have been found in Roman Gaul,
which remind one of the primitive totem form of Artemis in
Greece. The famous horse goddess, Epona, is more closely
related to our search, for she represents the phase of religious
development which we find in the witch cult. The worship of
Epona spread to Rome with the cavalry regiments which were
recruited in Gaul. According to the myth preserved there,
Epona, whose Gaulish name is related to the Roman equus and,
Greek 'ippos, was the child of a father in human shape by
mare. She thus bears a close relationship to horse-headed
"
Demeter and Hecate. It seems reasonable to think that both
Epona and Artio were names for the Celtic Artemis. In Roman
symbolism Epona often carries a key in her hand, which is
thought by some scholars to be the key of the stables. I find this
explanation too trivial. Epona was a great goddess and not a
mere healer of spavin or splint. The key surely represents the
power to unlock the doors of life and heaven. On other occasions,
when her representations carry a whip, this can hardly be so
small a matter as an indication of her desire for speed. It is more
likely that it shows her preparedness to chastise wrongdoers.
Had an account of the ritual connected with Epona survived, it is
probable that it would have explained much that we want to
Fig. 2.
know and given us the key to stories which are only found today
(a) skelc! of Gallo-Roman bronze of Epona with her mare (Mother?)
in the Irish writings of a later time, or in recorded scraps of and foal. The mare is of 'forest' type and was probably therefore a
folk-Iore. We will return to Epona later on ( Fig. z (^)). grey.
Since most of the Gaulish gods and goddesses are known only
(b) Plan of Magog as excavated at Wandlebury. The goddess is
from inscriptions on monuments, or brief accounts by Roman 77 ft. high, her stallion 106 ft. long. Note Magog's four breasts,
cut in the chalk rock.
writers, it is a matter of great difficulty to deduce much about into a cat to avoid Typhon as a serpent. Cernunnus was evidently
them. One thing, however, is very clear. Early Iron Age Celtic the great nature god of the celts, the equivalent of Pan, but hL
art is full of representations of a horned deity. The drawing of has the moon's torque. He is sometimes shown holding a ser-
the horns is sometimes mistaken for foliage by scholars, but pent_ in his hand. He is found associated with Apollo. He, the
they are horns none the less. The representations are of bull's, northern form of Pan, has usurped the attributes bf his consort.
ram's and stag's antlers on a male head, the bull's horns often In fact, at the time the Romans con-
appearing like lobes above the forehead. This is clearly a quered Gaul, the change from
nature god of the type of Diana's lover, Pan. In one fortunate Mother rule to Father rule had al-
case the name of this deity is preserved on a stone carving found ready taken place among the ruling
in Paris. He was Cernururus, or Cernunnos. There is one re- classes. Nothing to suggest that it
markable thing about Cernururus: not only does he wear an had not done so is found in classical
open neck-ring, or torque, like many Celtic men and some literature; but it is found in accounts
women, but he sometimes holds this torque in his hand or wears of events which happened in Britain
it on his antlers (Fig. g (r)). He introduces us to a third religious a century later.
phase which, in eestern Europe, does not appear to have been The witch cult, however, with its
completely accepted in England before A.D. too and in Scotland great emphasis on the supremacy of
before A.D. looo. This change was of a revolutionary character, the goddess, clearly developed at a
for it led to the supremacy of the male line of descent and male time when this change, the reversal
rule over the former descent through the female and kingship of the roles of Mother and Father,
obtained through marriage with the female heir. With this had not yet taken place in the land of
change in human affairs, the male god became of greater impor- its birth. Since it was widespread in
tance than the female consort. Cernunnus by holding the torque Gaul in the Middle Ages, it must
in his hand shows that he had adopted this lunar symbol, which surely have been a submerged belief
by right belongs to Artemis. When he is also found on sculpture at the time of the Roman Conquest
associated with Apollo, Diana's brother, the picture becomes and boiled up again later on.
clearer. Cernunnus has taken the place, in Gaul at any rate, of P*,,ho*ever, was not Diana's
the Celtic Artemis, who may be assumed to have been his con- only consort. According to the wit-
sort. The steps in this deduction may seem weak, but there is ches' Gospel, Lucifer, the sun, was Fig. 3.
more to the argument than this. her lover and the father of Aradia.
Diana was associated with the moon. She was frequently (a) Sketch of a god with
ln Gaul Belenus was the equivalent inscription 'Cernun-
shown on Roman sculpture with a stag beside her. She was the of Apollo and Belenus was another nos' found beneath
goddess of every kind of beast, but in particular of those which name, or form, of Ogmius. Ogmius Notre Dame Cathe-
showed her symbol of a sickle moon on some part of their body. was the Celtic Hercules and the god dral.
The horns of oxen and sheep, the antlers of deer, the hooves of of speech and writing: althoilgh
horses and the tushes of boars all fulfilled this condition. Further- (b) Sketch of a copy by
Hercules was not the official sungod L'Abbd Breuil of a
more, as we shall see later, the high stems and sterns and the in classical Romer 5ret Belenus was palaeolithic man from
curved hulls of ancient ships fulfilled the same condition. Pan, the sun god to the Gauls. When a cave in Ari ge,
the great nature god, was Diana's lover: Apollo, associated with Hiram, king of Tyre, set up the wearing a stag mask,
the sun, was her brother. Apollo came from the land of the image of Baal in a temple which was warpaint and a pony's
Hyperboreans, the land behind the north wind. Diana changed famous in the ancient world, Baal tail.
s4 s5
was depicted as Hercules with his club. This was somewhere
near the same time as Homer, about the beginning of the
first millennium before the birth of Christ. tt has been
suggested that Baal was once a female deity, but by this time
he was certainly male. The Celtic Belenus and the Phoenician
Baal appear to have been identical, although one is found at Chapter Three
the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the other in western
Europe. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to say that Lucifer,
the light-bearer, is Baal. We may be wrong in this, but every-
thing in this line of research is a matter of inference. You might HEN Professor W. J. Sollas wrote his Ancient Hunterg
say that atoms do not exist, because they cannot be seen. Yet
\ Xf
YY in l9l l, he was able to point to an affinity between the
they can be inferred and split as everybody knows, sometimes to Upper Palaeolithic hunters of western Europe and the Eskimo of
their great disadvantage. The inference then is that Lucifer, the early twentieth century. He could show a close resemblance
Belenus, Baal, Hercules and Ogmius are all names for the sun between many objects used by the Eskimo and those of Palaeoli-
god and lover of Diana, Artemis, Isis or Bellona, the moon and thic man. More than that, he could compare the shapes of skulls
earth goddess. Pan, or Cernunnus, the nature god, was also of modern Eskimos with that of a Palaeolithic skull found at a
her lover, although he had horns and hooves. In fact, wherever place called Chancelade and show that they were very much
we turn, we seem to come upon traces of a single underlying alike. I once asked my friend the late W. H. L. Duckworth, who
belief in which the male and female principles of nature are had a European reputation for knowledge of these matters,
worshipped as gods and goddesses in human form. They may whether he thought the Chancelade skull was that of an ancient
have a mass of different names and varying attributes, but they Eskimo. He replied that, if it were put amongst a collection of
all represent phases of the same two deities, or powers. As we modern Eskimo skulls, he would not be able to tell the difference.
follow this ripple even farther out from its unknown source, we Duckworth was so cautious in his statements that this was
will find these two principles known by the homely names of Ma good enough for me. There were clearly people living in the
and Dad. The worship of whatever forces were believed to be French caves in those early days who were indistinguishable
the origin of new life appears to have been the earliest and most from modern Eskimos in their bony structure. But recent
persistent of religious ideas. archaeological work in Arctic Canada and Alaska appears to
show that the earliest Eskimos in America had a very different
collection of tools and ornaments from those compared by Sollas
to those of Upper Palaeolithic man. Some of the earliest indeed
seem to have been acquainted with the use of iron and with the
art of China, or perhaps Indonesia. Their objects are so elabor-
ate in form and decoration and their way of life apparently so
different, that the only resemblance one can see to Upper Palaeo-
lithic man is in their extremely finely made flint implements.
Their hornes were square log houses with a central fire and
give one the impression of having been those of a people who
had once lived in a warmer climate and were adapting themselves
to Arctic conditions. More recently, however, remains of yet
earlier Eskimos have been found in caves in Alaska, which
s6 37
suggests that the evolution of recent Eskimo culture ma5r not flung down after they hacl been carried back to his cave. Many of
have been derived by way of the elaborate equipment I have his drawings were, in fact, made from dead beasts. You have
mentioned and Sollas may yet be right. There were perhaps only to turn pictures of the bison from Altamira upside-down to
many tribes of Eskimo who migrated from Asia into America. see that they were stifffrom rigor mortis when they were drawn
Some had been for a time in contact with more advanced civiliza- and had been carried home slung from a pole. This point was
tions, others had not. Some invented new methods of hunting noted long ago, but has been studiously disregarded by scholars
whales and other sea beasts; while some, like the Caribou who rhapsodize on the vigour of the ancient art. However I have
Eskimo of the Barrens of northern Canada, remained in a state seen so many dead beasts carried in, stags, bears and so on, that
scarcely to be distinguished from that of Palaeolithic man. All, I have no doubt at all about it. Nor has a single person with
however, appear to have kept the characteristic Eskimo type of similar experience to whom I have mentioned it doubted the fact.
skull, which rises like a penthouse to a ridge on the top. It is not The only reason why I have digressed on this point is because the
fanciful therefore to note comparisons between the folk-lore of big paintings in the caves were clearly done for a magical pur-
Eskimos and things we can infer from archaeological research pose. The hunters wanted the beasts dead and not scampering off
done on the contents of the Palaeolithic caves in Europe. Few laughing at them. When they wanted a dead beast, they drew a
things are so hard to destroy as superstitions. Not many men dead beast. When they wanted to amuse themselves, they
willingly infringe an ancient taboo, even if they have only heard carved or drew live beasts from memory.
it for the first time a few days before on a wireless broadcast The main object of painting animals on the walls of caves was
from the B.B.C. sympathetic magic. If you made a good enough picture of the
Palaeolithic cave art has fascinated people almost more than animal you wanted to eat, then by magic you would obtain the
any other archaeological discovery. That primitive hunters of food you wished for. You had, however, to perform the correct
bison and reindeer, at a time when ev€n the use of metal had not ritual and I should be surprised if blood, or fat, of the kind of
been thought of, should have been able to depict with such skill animal in question was not mixed withthepaintusedtoportrayit.
the animals on which they fed, amazes the man of today. And W'e are not, however, making a study of hunting magic; but
well it might, for his greatest accomplishments in this direction searching for the origins of a religion. Deep in the recesses of
seem to be confined to things made with pipe-cleaners and bits of caves, far beyond the reach ofdaylight, the hunters conjured up
wire, or stones with holes bored in them. The civilized man of beasts for the pot by the flickering light of tiny blubber lamps;
today, however, does not spend much of his life lying behind a but they also painted monstrous human figures, which are
boulder on a bare hillside to watch every movement of a herd of usually known as 'sorcerers' by students of the subject. The
deer, in the hope that he will be able to get close enough to one most celebrated of these sorcerers in the Trois Frbres cavern is
of them to kill it and so quiet the gnawing pains of hunger in his clearly meant to represent a man dressed in the mask of a rein-
empty belly. It would be more surprising to me if Palaeolithic deer, with its antlers upon his forehead (Fig. 3 (b)). His little
man, provided that he could draw at all, and many simple people eyes still peer out at you from inside his disguise. This figure
can draw extremely well, should have drawn his animals badly. may be interpreted in at least two ways. [t may be taken as a
Every curve of their bodies, and every movement that they magician dressed to take part in some ceremony designed to
made, must have been stamped into his mind like'Calais'on produce food for the tribe; or it may show a hunter disguised for
the purpose of stalking deer. It is possible that totemistic beliefs
Queen Mary's heart. It is social man, and particularly urban
man, who begins to produce the abortions which pass for grew out of this hunting device. Hunters observing the instant
modern art and reflect the chaos of his soul. What Palaeolithic alarm which affected their quarry when it saw or smelt a man,
man could not see, because they were hidden in grass or heather, and its relative disregard for the near approach of one of its own
were the feet of his animals. These he drew from dead beasts kind, must have thought out the idea of disguising themselves in
g9
38
a skin which both looked and smelt correctly. From this thought Highland shooting-lodge. Assuming that the clues are of impor-
may have developed something like this: 'When I dress up in tance, let us see what they may be thought to indicate. First they
the skin of a stag, I take on the appearance of a stag. When I tell us that belief in the potency of magic was widely believed at a
take on the appearance of a stag, I can approach other stags as if time when herds of reindeer were iommon in France and great
I were one of themselves. For the time being I am as if I were a carapaces of ice spread far out over the foothills of the Alps.
stag. The stag's skin belongs to me and is part of me, and yet it Secondly, they show that this magic was apparently aimed at
is still the skin of a stag. It has qualities which the other stags securing an abundance of food. Thirdly, th"y suggest that the
recognize as their own. When wearing my stag's skin, I am as it germ of totemism was already there and that marriage with the
were a stag. I must then be related to the stag in some way.' totem animal to ensure its productivity had probably been
Nobody knows how the totem idea arose. This is simply a enacted as a sympathetic magical ritual by humans dressed in the
possible suggestion of the way in which, by frequent use of such skins of the totem beasts. Here, surely, is the embryo of an
a disguise, hunters may have come to think of themselves as in ancestral witch cult. I think we can go even further than this. If
some way related to the beasts they hunted. In their magic in the women went into the deep recesses of the caves, where th.y
dark gloom of the caves, they may not only have tried to entice were probably forbidden to go at other times, for a symbolic
the quarry into their power, but asked its permission to kill it marriage ceremony, is not this the origin of the myth of Pluto
because it was one of them. They also probably performed other and Proserpina and the one preserved among the witches of
ritual to ensure that there would be a plentiful supply of the today? The chief magician, the shaman, angakok, the father of
animals in question. There would presumably have been at least the tribe, or whatever he was, is already well on the road to
three ceremonies to be performed: ( t) to ask permission from becoming a horned Bod, a Cernunnus, or Pan.
the stags to kill one of their number; (2) to endow the hunters Dr. Margaret Murray amived at much the same conclusion in
with the qualities of the skin; (s) to ensure that the numbers of her God of the Witches. When her next book appears, I have no
the stags did not diminish, but increased. F or ( e) the hunter had doubt it will tell us a great deal more and all I have written on
to be temporarily turned into a stag-man. For (e) it seems most this subject will appear very superficial. Nevertheless I hope
probable that he would have to go through the act of procreation that by the time this book comes to an end there may be a few
with a woman dressed in the skin of a hind. Although there is suggestions in it that my old friend has not thought of.
no real evidence of this, there is at least a slender clue. A well- In the Upper Palaeolithic then, if we may trust the inferences
known carving from a French cavern shows a gravid female I have made from our slender clues, there was an idea in exis-
figure, half deer and half woman. This at least shows that there tence which might blossom out into a full-fledged religion. At
was some idea of relationship between the two species in the present, however, it is without its chief deity. There is no Diana.
mind of the man who made the carving. We are following very This is not suryrising. In a population which lives exclusively
slender clues. The remarkable thing is not that the clues are by hunting, the hunter is far more important than his squaw. She
slender, but that, after the passage of perhaps 12,ooo years, there may cut up and cook the meat; scrape the fat offthe skins and
are any clues to follow at all. There are enough of them, how- peg them out to dry; chew them till they are soft enough to use;
ever, for the Rev. E. A. Armstrong in his recent Folh-lore of cut up the rawhide thongs; bring in the firewood; collect roots
Birds to be able to suggest that various ideas noted in the cave and nuts; bear the new generation of hunters and do all the less
art travelled all round the world and survived in places till the attractive work of the community. But the man goes out and gets
present day. the meat at risk of life and limb. On him the life of everyone
I think we must take notice of every clue and, instead of com- depends. When he has brought in the game, he can lie about and
plaining how few they are, meditate for a moment on how many whittle bones, flake arrowheads out of flint, or just sit in the sun
prayer books you would be likely to find in the midden of a whistling to himself. He is the boss. No Great Mother idea is
40 4l
likely to be born in such a setting, or if it does come; the Great the well-known painting at Cogul in Spain in which a ring of
Mother will only be a consort and squaw to the Great Father. dancers is apparently shown, the dancers are not naked, or of
There are no monstrous female figures painted on the cave walls. mixed sexes, but clothed and all women. They are dancing round
There may be numerous little ivory carvings of gross or slender the phallic figure of a man. If this painting represents a ritual
women and even a frieze of women's legs showing anatomical dance for the production of fertility magic, it is directed towards
details at the top. But this kind of thing need not have any the male and not the female principle.
greater significance than a general interest in sex. There is one With the disappearance of the Palaeolithic hunters and their
carving of a woman holding out a horn, which in a later period art from north-west Europe, we are left without clues in that
would certainly be taken for a goddess offering a horn of plenty. area for thousands of years. I can see nothing in the archaeology
Perhaps this is what it does suggest; although we have as yet no there to help us. Some remarkable antlered heads were found in
hint that an idea of anthropomorphic deities had arisen in the an excavation of the site of a hunter's camp at Star Car in York-
minds of men. The Eskimos,like some other Mongolian peoples, shire by Professor J. G. D. Clark. These are pieces of the frontal
had no real religion. They had shamans, who could talk to spirits bones from skulls of red deer with the antlers still attached. The
of various kinds; but there were no deities. Palaeolithic man bones are roughly detached from the skulls and holes have been
probably resembled them in this. Some of the statuettes un- cut carelessly in order to fasten the bones and antlers to some-
doubtedly represent pregnant women and may therefore cor- thing. Neither the edges of the slabs of bone nor the edges of the
respond to the little ivory talismans found in old Eskimo ruins. holes have been smoothed off. The antlers themselves,like many
It was desirable to have children in a world where accidental detached specimens found on the site, have been much reduced in
death was presumably common and the expectation of life short. size and considerably mutilated by the removal of strips of horn
Few Eskimo hunters used to live beyond the age of forty-five. By with a flint burin. The strips of horn were then utilized to make
that time they became too slow in their reactions to cope with barbed points, often wrongly spoken of as harpoons, for tipping
the dangers of their calling. The sea, or the walrus, or the bear fish-spears, or other implements. It has been suggested that these
claimed them. I have seen a kayak paddle, thrown up by the sba, antlered'heads'were used either in ritual dances or as dis-
on the shore of a deserted island offthe coast of Greenland, which guises for hunters. These ideas do not seem probable. No one
was probably the only remaining piece of evidence of such a would willingly use a mutilated object, and one moreover which
tragedy. It would have been much the same for Palaeolithic man. would chafe holes in his skin, for a ritual dance. The supernatural
The rush of a bison would be just as hard to avoid as that of a powers would undoubtedly be offended at such casual behaviour.
walrus. So children were needed if the tribe was to survive. Nor would a hunter use a disguise of this character when the
People who used magic to obtain their food, doubtless employed whole point of it was to look as like the living beast as possible.
it also to get their children. There is, however, nothing to show 'fhe gashes made by the burin on the antlers would show up as
that a Great Mother was importuned to that end. Perhaps it is glaring white streaks for a long distance. I think the real pur-
more probable that the fertility of their women was regarded as pose of these objects was of a far simpler nature. Considerable
good magic in itself. The young Eskimo hunter, when he had force was needed to cut grooves in the antlers for detaching the
killed his first seal, had to handle a girl in an intimate fashion. It rtrips of horn. One hand had to hold the antler, while the other
is remarkable also that the frankly amoral game of 'Lights Out', rused the burin. If, however, you strapped the detached slab of
or Benevento, was played by both Eskimos and witches. bone with the antlers on it to an upright post or tree-trunk; you
'We seem to be looking at a phase in history in which part of an
1t:ould use both hands to work the burin and bring more force
ancestral witch cult had developed, but the essential goddess of behind its stroke. The rest of the skull went into the family stew
the full religion had not yet made her appearance. llefore the brains rotted inside it. So, interesting as these objects
Furthermore, although Dr. Murray has drawn attention to lre, I fear they are of no value to our present investigation,
42
49
 Lord of the Underworld may well have been the same Palaeo-
lithic sorcerer whose picture figures in the French caves and
was there perhaps IO,OOO years ago.

Chapter Four

f Xf E learnt from the witch trials that a horned tnale figure

VV once played an important part in the witch ritual-and
there appears to be good reason for thinking that this figure
originated far back in Palaeolithic times. In classical story, the
horned god Pan, the nature god, was one of Diana's lovers. In
Gaulish art a horned figure is often worked into their intricate
ornamental patterns ( Fig. 4 ( b)) and it is reasonable to think that
this is a Celtic Pan. Under the influence of classical art the Gauls
produced sculptures of some of their gods and one of these,
antlered and wearing a torque, is known to be named Cernunnus
(FiS. s (u)). In one group he sits, holding a horn of p-lenty,
crowned with stag's antlers, with Apollo and Mercury. Caesar
reported that Mercury was the greatest of the Gaulish gods, but
it is clear that the Mercury of the Gauls bore little resemblance
to the Mercury of Rome. One of his Gaulish names was cer-
tainly Esus, which is apparently a variation of the Greek Zeus;
but he seems also to have been rePresented in triple form as
Ogmius, Teutates and Taranis. Ogmius was a Hercules com- Fig. +.
plete with club. It seems then that Cernunnus is a more direct
(u) Sketch of the 'Devil's Stone', Copgrove, near Ripon.
ancestor of Diana's lover, Pan, than is the Palaeolithic shaman in
A left-handed, horned figure, very worn and indis-
the depths of the caves. In modern witch ritual I can find no men- tinct. Perhaps first century A.D. (after Major).
tion of any male deity, except a Lord of the Underworld, who (b) Horned stone, Celtic head from Heidelberg (after
may be this same cave 'sorcerer'(Fig. 3 (b)). Note'third eye'(see Fig. z).
Jacobsthal).
the modern witches have a myth, in which he is visited by the
Diana's lover in the witches' Vangelo was not Pan, but Luci-
Queen of Heaven, who becomes his mistress. This story seems
to be a variant of the classical myth of Pluto and Proserpina, but ,fcr. Lucifer the light-bearer figures in the witch trials and is
it is so widespread that there is no reason for supposing that it rlternatively known as Beelzebub, or the Devil. Lucifer was
came from the Romans, or from the Greeks. We will leave this known over much of Gaul, Britain and Ireland as Lugh (the
problem for the moment, with the thought in our minds that the Latin: ttrx). Places like Lyons in France still bear his name, for
44 45
Lyons was once Lugudunum, Lugh's dun, or fort. Lugh's name the moment, however, we will continue to investigate Lucifer
still survives in Britain today. There is a Lugmoor on the hill and in this process find ourselves being led into some curious
just above the house where I am writing this. There is also a by-ways of study.
Bulstone, which is Bel's stone and Bel is Beelzebub. In fact the One of the best clues is Pope Gregory's instruction to the
place is dotted with names derived from the worship of the clergy that if they found beliefs which were so deeply rooted in
old gods. On the opposite side of the combe is Elverway. Elva pagan faith that they could not easily be removed, they were to
was Lugh's sister-in-law. The combe itself is Branscombe (Cwm turn them into Christian guise. This saved many things. Brigid,
Bran) and Bran is Lugh in the form of a raven. The ravens still a form of the Great Mother, became a saint. So did Lugh and
nest on the cliffand give me great pleasure when they fly over Mabon. Lugh apparently became Michael and Mabon became
croaking, for the raven's croak is always thought to be lucky by Andrew. This has been widely recognized for a long time and
the Gael, and ravens are most attractive birds. there is no need for me to try to explain how Lucifer became
Probably this kind of thing can still be found all over the west the very archangel Michllel who, according to accepted belief
of Britain. I happened, for instance, to notice a Bel stone marked threw him out of Heaven on to earth. Both the Christian Church
on the ordnance map at the great hill fort of trggardon in Dorset. and the witches' Vangelo have this story of Lucifer being thrown
Whether Eggardon was once Dun nan Each, the horse's fort, I out of Heaven. 'And there was war in Heaven,' says the Book of
do not know. This, however, seems possible, for the 'Grey Revelation. 'Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon
Mare and her Colts' barrows are only five miles distant and the and his angels,' and goes on to say that the old Devil, Dragon,
Grey Mare, or White Horse, played a great part in pre- Serpent, or what not, was cast out and fell upon the earth. 'I
Christian religion. The Saxons appear to have translated or dis- beheld Lucifer as lightning fallen from Heaven.' In the Vangelo,
torted many ancient place names and in the process usually Lucifer was cast out of Heaven for his pride in his beauty. The
reversed the order of the words. Dun dubh became Blackbury similarity between these two myths suggests that they are each
and Cwm Bran Branscombe. Moridunum, Seaton, however re- derived from some yet more ancient religion.
tains its original order in translation from Muir dun. Both Gaelic Of course there is considerable confusion in all this, as might
and We1sh forms of Celtic are found in this area, which was once be expected when you try to adapt a belief from one faith to a
the borderland between the Durotriges and the Dumnonii. totally different one. In Fig. 5 (5) I have drawn Michaelfrom a
To return to Lucifer. Lucifer was the bringer of the light. gold 'angel' of Edward IV. There is seen Michael, winged and
Everyone of course knew that the tight came from the sunind clad in scales. He has a fiery halo and is busy pushing a cross of
so the sun and Lucifer are sJmonymous. Diana, in the Vangelo, Lorraine into the old Dragon's mouth. To make sure, however,
created the light. Lucifer was her brother and lover. In Roman that there should be no mistake, the artist who drew the design
terms Lucifer is Apollo. In the Welsh lands Apollo was Mabon for the coin has put a small sun symbol beside the archangel's
(or Maponus). Beelzebub, known to the Celts as Bel, Beli, head. It had to be there, because there were two religions in the
Balor and so on, who burnt people up with his fiery glance, is land. In the days of the Plantagenets, who, according to Dr.
only another name for Lucifer or Lugh. Margaret Murray, were all witches, the reverse of their silver
We have therefore a clear indicaiion that the witch religion coinage bears a representation of a cross with pellets, which
was not a single primitive belief derived from one Palaeolithic could be taken either as a Christian cross or a pagan sun disc,
origin. It has one Great Mother, it is true, but Diana has at least whichever Jrou prefered (Fig. 5 (s)).
two lovers to explain the union of two beliefs. In one the counter- If it had not been for the work of Margaret Murray, Sir
,'James
part of the Great Mother is a nature god; in the other he is the Frader and Harold Bayley, we should probably never have
sun: Having dissected these two beliefs out of it, we may at thought of looking for evidence of this kind. We were brought
least suspect that there are others mixed up in it as well. For up to the legacy of Victorian teaching, which gave the impression
46 47
 that Christianity had been the only religion in the land since tlie
days when the pagan Northmen were tamed to it. There were a
few old country people, of course, who still held to silly suPer-
stitions, but very few people grasped that these superstitions
were surviving traces of a rival belief and still fewer who realized
that this belief was not entirely extinct. If you wished to learn
about paganism, /ou must either study the classics or go out to
the lands where 'the heathen in his blindness bowed down to
wood and stone'. The idea that one could learn about paganism
amongst the people living in these islands never seems to have
suggested itself to more than a minute number.
bur pagans do not seem to have gone in for much bowing
down to images. Their religion was real paganism, in which
living forces were worshipped with magical rites. T!.y needed
no images of the sun and moon, when they could see them in the
sky; but only places in which to perform their nature magic.
They did not even need statues of the Horned God, when they
could hear the wild red stag's grunting roar in the dark autumn
night. The powers of nature were all about them and they could
portray them themselves in their seasonal festivities. It was the
towni*eiler in his rabbit warren of dirt and disease who, in his
so+alled cultured state, needed these images to bow down to.

+& Some of the friction between Christianity and the witch cult in
medieval times seems to me to have been due as much to the
differences in outlook between townsman and countryman, as to
any fundamental difference in the original teaching. In early
+, medieval days members of ruling families aPpear to have had
little difficulty in composing the differences and being members
of both religions. Even the Christian priests and bishops were
sometimes, as Margaret Murray has shown, called in to perform
the pagan rites. It is easy to see how this came about. The king
of the iountry or the priest in his parish was regarded as the
professional go-between, whose business it was to ensure that
the Higher Powers provided the community with prosperity and
Fig. 5. fertility of man, beast and fietrd. It was useless to have a ruler or
( r) Duke William at the battle of Hastings, showing his club and priest who did not see to this, and useless to have a god who
personal Standard with sun symbol. From the Bayeux Tapestry.
,iook no interest in such matters, for they were the life of the
(e) The Cerne Giant (Helith, Helios, or Hercules) with his club. people. Of what use was a moral code to an empty belly? It is one
(s) Sun symbol from a coin of Edward III. the two things which brook no denial. It was here that Pope
(+) Bronze Age sun symbols from the Bohuslan rock engravings. regoryls wise ordinance *T, most important. It was the
(r) St. Michael from a gold 'angel' of Edward IV showing sun
symbol beside his head (actual figure is one inch long).
dogmatist in the later medieval Church who, thinking himself Crockford's Clerical Directory is something like Lloyd's Regis-
above such things, was responsible for the bitter campaign against ter of Shipping, but not so clearly printed and less vital to
any form of diversionary belief. If organizations,like individuals, Britain. If you have seen neither, it is something like several
are under the rule of Karma, as the Hindus believe, then these telephone directories bound together. Crockford gives a list of
narrow churchmen have laid a bloody weight on the body they churches with their dedications, incumbents, whom we should
were supposed to serve. Had Gregory's rule been carried out call'parsons', dioceses and so on. I am told it is not reliable as
always, there would have been no reigns of massacre and murder. far as the dedications go; but it is as good as anything one can
Remembering how important sacred places were in ancient lay hands on without considerable trouble. Some of the dioceses
religions and remembering Gregory's instruction, it seemed to hive obviously been better handled than others. Personally I
m" that there was an opportunity for learning something from would rather have Lloyd's Register every time: Sarah Jane.
the dedications of churches. Lugh being thought to be Michael Wood barquentine. Built 1879. Two hundred tons, and so on
and Mabon Andrew, it seemed to me that the topographical (this is not a realone), tells you a lot if you love ships, but Crock-
distribution of the churches dedicated to these two names might ford has a smell of death and decaying vegetation in cold
possibly be instructive. It has always been conceded by anti- churches. Still, it is useful for our purposes. It is a tedious busi-
quarians that early churches were frequently placed on sites ness wading through Crockford to find the dedications. They
formerly devoted to pagan rites. If the distribution of the are arranged in alphabetical order in very small print. Unless the
churchei could be linked to any known prehistoric sites, then the light is very good, you need a lens to read them.
probability was that the people using the prehistoric site also I wanted the churches in three dioceses of which I knew the
used the spot on which the church now stands for some perfor- topography reasonably well, namely Exeter, Sarum and Bath
mance of a pagan religious nature. I had no idea what was likely and Wells. Those of Devon have been very kindly checked for.
to emerge from such a study; nor whether it had been attempted me by Miss Theo Brown, the folk-lorist. Sarum and Bath and
by anyone else. Being, however, an archaeologist, it seemed to Wells are unchecked and from Crockford. As far as I can judge,
me that no harm could come from investigatit g. I would look up Sarum has been treated with less care than the other two. Many
the dedications to Michael and Andrew for a given area, plot dedications are not even suggested.
them on a map and see whether they were entirely sporadic or There are about forty-five Michaels in Devon and only
distributed in relation to something we already recognized as twenty-nine Andrews, several of these are only those of small
being a prehistoric phenomenon. coastal or hill-top chapels. According to Crockford, there are
It-was obvious of course that some dedications were quite twenty-nine Michaels in the large Sarum diocese and forty in
modern, some wrongly ascribed and some unknown. But with Bath and Wells. As I was six short from Crockford for Devon, it
this proviso, the investigation appeared to be fairly reliable. is probably safe to add a few to each of the other dioceses. In any
There remained, however, a problem. How close was a pre- case the two combined are but a small proportion of the total
historic religious site to a prehistoric dwelling site? There was number of village churches. By far the largest number are those
no means ofanswering this, but I decided that an hour's walk of of the Virgin Mary, who we will mention again later. According
three miles over unfenced or unwalled country was a reasonable to Crockford there are at least 525 churches in the Exeter
measure of propinquity. I soon saw that the bulk of correspond- diocese, 5o9 in Bath and Wells and 556 in Salisbury, which
ing situations were well within this limit and that a few at an gives an idea of what a small percentage of the whole number is
hour and a half to two hours' walk probably belonged to the 1laken up by Michael and Andrew. It works out at about a
pattern of distibution. fourteenth of tbe total for Michael.
- The story begins with the borrowing of a copy of Crockford. Now the actual dwelling-places of the peoples of the pt"-
Most people have never *?: Crockford except in novels. historic [ron Age, the age of are few and far between,
Tr""r,t'
for they are not easily recognized. The strongholds of the chief- say that in many cases Michael and Andrew do app-ear to be
tains, however, the duns, or hill forts, are mostly known. There linked to the lron Age duns. If so, it seems reasonable to con-
the people presumably hurried in time of trouble. In them the clude that the folk-lore pioneers were right when they said that
head of the clan, or the chief of the sept, presumably had his drese two saints were once Lugh and Mabon. Then we have
home and there his wives and servants lived more or less per- surely a picture of continuity over a period of two thousand
manently. He himself, if we may judge from the lrish epic
stories, was frequently away hunting, guesting or fighting. One
would expect the sacred places of the community to have been
reasonably close to the hill fort; although some were no doubt of
such sanctity that they were known over wide areas and may not
have been anywhere near a dun. Some of these may well have
been of much greater antiquity than the Iron Age and, like
Stonehenge and Avebury, in use for many centuries already. It
seems reasonable then to suppose that, if we can demonstrate a
relationship between the lron Age duns and the dedications to
Michael and Andrew, we are really demonstrating the relation-
ship between the dun and the sacred places formerly connected
with it. Whether these places were once springs, wells, trees or
stones is of no importance to the general investigation at this
juncture.
With our list of dedications beside us, a pair of dividers and
a ruler and with the ordnance map spread out on the table, it
becomes clear at once that a very large proportion of Michaels
and Andrews are within an hour's walk of well-known Iron Age
hill forts. It is quite surprising. You find large areas with no
cluns and no Michaels or Andrews. Then an area studded with Fig. 6. Sketch map of South-west England between
forts in which the required dedications are frequent. Often, as at Bridgwater Bay and the Wiltshire Avon, showing hill
Musbury and Axmouth in the Axe valley, the village churches forts as a dot with a surrounding three-mile circle, lake
are just at the feet of the hills on which the duns of Musbury and villages with a central cross, dedications to Michael as a
Hawksdown stand. At Montacute there is not even a church and vertical stroke and to Andrew as a horizontal one.
the dun itself is known as St. Michael's Hill. Twenty hill forts in
the Salisbury diocese have a required dedication within an hour's
walk. Some, like Musbury in Wiltshire, have two Michaels;
others, like Clearbury ring, have both Michael and Andrew. years, which makes nonsense of the Victorian idea that the
The map (trig. 6) gives some idea of the picture for the area Anglo-Saxons displaced or destroyed the bulk of the earlier
between the Wiltshire Avon and Bridgwater Buy. The assumed population. I have made this suggestion frequently before,
basing it on other evidence, but this continuity in the use of
relationship appears to hold good from Cambridge to Start
sacred rites is as good an argument as any I have yet found.
Point.
It seems to me that without further ado we can make a num- When the Christian teachers came among the supposedly
ber of inferences from this littlepiece of research work. We can Anglo-Saxon population, they met people all over the southern
E, 58
half of Britain so determined to reverence numerous Celtic Saxon immigration was relatively slight, should produce evi-
places that they found it necessary t9 invg\e_ Gregory's .instruc- dence quite as valuable and interesting as any digging of the
iion by twisting Lugh into Michael and Mabon into Andrew. entrances of hill forts. Strange as it may seem, little attempt has
Anglo-Saxon deitieJthat are known, Woden, Nerthus and the been made to find the houses of the chieftains inside the hill
,.rt", bear little resemblance to Lugh and Mabon. Nerthus is forts, for archaeologists are mostly like sheep. If one digs the
probably the Great Mother, but it would be a matter of great entrance to a camp, all must do so. Better work has been done
aimcutty to decide which, if any, Saxon god represented the sun. in lreland, where the homes inside have often been carefully
Yet wlien King Cnut made a law against pagan customs, he examined.
specially menti,oned the sun and moon' springs. and -trees. I-,
looks ,o"ty much as if he were legislating against the-witch
religion, in which both of Diana's lovers were involved. The sun
waJlucifer, the moon Diana, while the trees and springs were
the properties of Pan. It is a strange thought that, while sit-
ting in i p"* in a country church, you are sitting ol the _spot
whire, tw-o thousand years before, the congregation feasted and
danced in honour of Lucifer and Diana. Yet perhaps it is not
so strange after all, for the site which was thus wrested from
one old"religion was later forcibly taken from the Roman
Catholics.
This study could, I feel certain, be greatly elaborul.q. If
somebody with time to spare would take some of these hill forts
and examine all the field names in the neighbourhood, clues will
still be available, a Lugmoor, an Ogwell and so on. The Celts
were in the habit of giving names to any feature in the country-
side which might be useful for reference in conversation or
direction, the sfeckled knoll, the polecat's crag, the raven's rock
and so on. Many were translated into Anglo-Saxon, or pidgin-
German, and some at least remain in field names to this day. If
an area where one clue to the ancient religion is known to exist
is carefully examined and all folk stories connected with it are
also colleited, a picture will begin to form. When a group_ of
several such is examined as a whole, it will be found that
"r.ui
quite a lot of information comes to light. I have already made
Jome attempt at this kind of thing in relation to the figures at
Wandlebury near Cambridge (see Gogmagog), here in Brans-
combe and round Moretonhampstead, but am well aware that
my investigations have been far too superficial. Enquiries in the
west of England, where there are ghosts innumerable, black
dogs, and siories of queer happenings like coffins lying in the
roid at night; rvhere halftloaked Celtic names abound and
56
 figure of Hercules, with a club. This was all long before the
Galatae, the Gauls, passed over into Asia Minor and still longer
before St. Paul wrote them an Epistle, so if BaaI was of Celtic
origin, he belonged to some much earlier wave of invaders. But
who knows who the Keltoi, or Galatae, really were? They were
certainly not the little dark men, who people speak of as Celts
Chapter Five today. All classical writers and all their own writings speak of
them as tall fair men. The fallen Galatian warriors on the sculp-
tures of Pergamon show men of this type, who might easily pass
for brigadiers in the British Army today. Everyone must know
T UCIFER now has been brought back into the light and we the famous statue of the dying Gaul, and I need say no more
I-rcun leave him for the moment and study the other form of about it. The point, however, is this: if Baal came to Asia
him given in the witch trials, Beelzebub. Minor with some Celtic people before the days of King Solomon,
he probably reached Britain before the days of the Celtic Iron
'i:iffi j; i'*f ","Ix#o;,,0 Age also. This means that some Bronze Age peoples in Britain
were an earlier wave of Celts than the iron-users, who do not
And in other frying-pan,
the a
jolly old seem to have arrived here much before 4oo s.c.
And I think myself a man.
Baal is known in place names in England, but in Wales and
This was a traditional doggerel rhyme collected at Cerne Abbas Ireland he has a considerable place in literature. He was known
at the foot of the turf-cut giant and referring to him. Beelzebub as Beli and Balor, but like all these gods he had a large number
was found in the New Testament as was Lucifer. It was trans- of different names as well. He was certainly Dagda, who was a
lated as King, or Lord, of the Flies, which may or may not be typical clubbearing Hercules. He was Ogmius to the Gauls of
correct, for Beelzebub was 'prince of the devils' and a devil France and in lreland the form of writing known as 'ogham'
originally meant a holy one, as the word'divus'means in Latin still bears his name. To those who do not know the term, ogham
and 'deva' means in India today. But the gods of one religion writing is a system of straight cuts formed on the angle of the
are the devils of another and th"y are liable to changes in fortune It resembles the cuts made on a
side of a stone or piece of wood.
like anybody else. Divine and devilish are the same thing. It tally stick. Ogham writing is supposedly understood, but it is
depends on how you view them. But Beelzebub was a very remarkable with what frequency ogham experts differ in their
ancient personage in the Near East. He was originally Bel, or translation of a particular inscription.
Baal, which some authorities think to have been an ancient Balor *ur o6',riously the sun. He had a glance which burnt
Hittite word akin to Celtic. One imagines that BeI means people up and, in this respect, resembled the Indian god Siva.
beautiful; although it is usually taken to mean lord or god. It is There are so many ways in which the Indian gods agree with
not the personal name of the god, but a title. Baalim were little those of western Europe, even to their sitting in the 'lotus'
Baals, presumably statues, or perhaps stone phalli. Ashtoreth, position, that it is impossible to evade the conclusion that both
Astarte, Ishtah and so Artemis, the Queen of Heaven, that is the are derived from some original Aryan source. This fact brings us
Diana whom we are looking for, was Baal's consort. Now it hap- again to the idea of waves of diffusion spreading in many direc-
pens that we know how Baal was portrayed in the ancient world, tions, well before the days of King Solomon. One thinks at once
for when Hiram, kirg of Tyre, built his famous temple in the of Homer's Achaeans who, as the late Sir William Ridgeway
days of King Solomon (that is somewhere about 9oo n.c.), he demonstrated so clearly in his Early Age of Greece, had all the
put up a statue to Baal. The statue is said to have been like a characteristics of a north European people. They had obviously
66 c7
been settled in Greece for some time before Homer wrote in people are often thought to have come from somewhere near the
about IOOO s.c. We can begin to see not only why the Greek foothills of the Alps and are spoken of as an Alpine race. This
myths should resemble those of western Furope, but alSo that would suit the time to distance ratio very well. I think our Beaker
we should look for the appearance of Celtic gods in Britain well friends spoke Gaelic. By this I do not mean, of course, that a
back in time before the days of iron. With the Celtic gods, we Beaker man could stand on the quay at Mallaig and indulge in a
should expect surely an early form of Celtic speech to have been long conversation with a MacDonald from South Uist. The
in use. This has a number of drastic implications for the pre- Gaelic of today seems to me to bear much the same relationship
historian and makes 'overhanging rim urns' and 'carp's tongue to a lost original that modern English bears to Old German.
swords' seem rather small beer. We can see how right Sir Both these modern tongues are a kind of pidgin language, which
Cyrit Fox was to concentrate on such traces of ritual as he could has passed through many mouths which were brought up to
observe in the burial cairns he excavated. another speech. The Beaker man, if I am right in thinking he
Here then we seem to have one of the ripples I mentioned used it, spoke Gaelic with a much more elaborate grammar; but
before. A ring spreading out from some unknown source and in this language many words would be recognizable today.
washing up on different shores in approximately the order of its There are now believed to have been two distinct strains of
distance from its place of origin. It reached Greece before Beaker man. One is thought to have come by sea from the south
IOOO r.c., Palestine well before 9OO s.c. and perhaps before up the Atlantic seaboard. We are not dealing with this branch
t4,OO n.c., India maybe a little later. When did it reach England? now. The other is brought into eastern England by way of the
Here we can only make a guess, but looking at the orthodox vanished plains, which are now submerged beneath the North
archaeological work of the late Professor Gordon Childe and the Sea. These men should have been our proto-Celtic wave.
efforts of more recent workers, such as Professor Stuart Piggott, The users of iron, who seem to have formed a second wave of
I feel that, presuming that their dating is reasonably good, the true Celts, appear to have begun to settle in eastern England
uniform sprlad of the Middle Bronze Age culture wide about the somewhere about 4oo B.c. If we can trust bardic tradition, and I
land somewhere about f4,OO B.c. may well be an indication of think we can do so, it gives a similar date to that arrived at by
this, shall we call it 'proto-Celtic' spread. It may have arrived archaeological study. The Cwffirlr as the bards S:rngr arrived
earlier. The so-called 'Beaker' people could have brought it about the Humber under the leadership of Hu the Mighty. Hu
about lSOO n.c., but I do not like the shape of their heads! was clearly a kind of Brahma, having no visible form and being
Their skulls are round and one would expect the proto-Celt to omnipotent. He is quite distinct from the family affairs of Lugh
have had a skull of medium length. Unfortunately the Middle and Mabon, but it seems probable that the Druids and bards
Bronze Age people cremated their dead, probably in honour of absorbed the earlier gods into their teaching in the same way
some supposed command from Beelzebub himself, and we can that Lugh and Mabon were absorbed into Christianity. The con-
have no 1d"u what shape their skulls may have been. Otherwise ception of Hu and the ideas of transmigration which went with it
there is much to commend the Beaker people as candidates. were far too difficult for comprehension by the ordinary tribes-
They were sturdyr migrant pastoralists, apparently driving man.
theii flocks and herds for long distances across the downs and To return to Beelzebub, we will look at some of the other
moorland ridges. They seem to have been the originators of the information we have about BaaI or Bel. The Carthaginians took
solar-disc stone circles which still stud the countryside today. him with them into Africa and there, as Baal Hammon, he had a
On the whole I think the Beaker people must have been our consort Tanit. Tanit is no doubt our Tana of the Vangelo. Baal
earliest proto-Celtic wave. If so, then since their Baal appears to ''H..rno., at Carthage was a horned god. The pair were"the great
have reiched Britain before he reached the Near East, we should male and female principles. Baal, as Balor in lreland, was, as I
look for the origin of our ripple at no great distance. The Beaker have said before, the representation of the sun and like Lucifer he
58 59
was worsted in combat by , later version of the same theme. the more numerous its gods would be. Rome had them by the
score and yet they were apparently all derived from one original
Just as Lucifer is said to have been defeated by Michael, so was
Balor blinded by Lugh in his single eye. This was a primitive idea of a Great Father and Great Mother. Seton Lloyd in his
explanation of how the old sun god came to be replaced b-y excavations in Turkey found a succession of superimposed
" temples covering a thousand years of Bronze Age, in which the
more cultured specimen. Lugh is simply a more advanced Balor.
When we find i get stone at Eggardon Iron Age fort, with two symbolism of male and female fertility was Presented with great
churches dedicated to St. Michael near it, we have a picture of an simplicity and without change. The horned altar to which the
evolutionary process drawn for us on the ordnance maP.!ugl,, sacrifice was bound, as it says in the Bible, was found in the
Bel and Dagda are all linked together in various ways. P"Sd1 earliest temples right through to the latest. The gods worshipped
and Bel are each in some phase a Hercules figure, with a club, and there were probably known as Baal and Ashtoreth.
the day on which Dagda was traditionally forced to eat t hyg"- It may be thought that I am simplifying everything too much,
meal out of a hole in the ground was Lugh's great festival of but has there really been any change at all in 4,'ooo yearsl 'No
Lugnasad ( t November). In other words Lugh's festival was man hath seen God at any time' holds as good today as it did to
on& the day of Dagda's feast. The more primitive version of the the Beaker shepherd standing where Chanctonbury Ring was
god with his ctub had been replaced with one armed with spear still fifteen hundred years away in the future. If you are going to
and sling. It seems probable that each version formerly belonged personify the Deity, it seems more reasonable to have both male
to a different tribe. The same multiplicity of names will be and female, as the Roman Catholics now seem to have aPpre-
noticed when we come to deal with their consorts. It is unfor- ciated. The druidic conception of Hu the Mighty, who was so
tunate that the name of Balor's female counterpart appears to small as to be invisible and yet omnipotent, was of a different
have been lost; but since that of Baal Hammon was Tanit, which order altogether. To regard the lron Ag" Celts, who had
must surely be a form of Tana or Diana, it seems evident that it attained to this degree of thinking, as blue-painted savages is
was Danu or Annu, the great Irish Mother Goddess, whose quite ridiculous. People in western Europe are only just begin-
breasts are still to be seen rising above the fertile plains. ning to reach this stage again. Men, so the Druids taught, must
It is as certain as most things in this type of study that the real be born and suffer again and again until they are fit to stand the
name of any god was never mentioned in public. Baal in what- strain of Eternity. The anthropomorphic creeds whisked them
ever form the word occurs simply means god, or lord, or some- away at once after death to lead a useless existence of lolling
thing of the sort. Similarly with Dagda, who is usually referred about, feasting and flirting in a land of perpetual youth, or more
to aJ'the Dagda' ; this will not be his secret name. I believe it to boring still of standing about singing hymns for ever. Give me
be no more or less than Dada, Dad, Daddy and the rest of the Hu the Mighty every time; I can see some sense in this idea.
children's names for father. It is exactly comparable to Pa, Papa The religion of the witches today certainly aPpears to have
and so on. Dagda was simply 'the Great Father'. Baal, Balor, some druidic tenets. They believe that after death they will be
Beli, Beelzebu6 and the other forms were just 'the Lord'. Lugh born again. If they can get Diana to intercede for them, they will
and Lucifer are 'the Light'. None of these is the god's name be born again surrounded by those they loved in this life. This
and there is nothing to prevent any or all of the terms applying belief bears a close resemblance to the ideas of those students of
to the same deity. It was the gradual coalescing of tribes into the occult today who accept the reliability of evidence supposedly
nations which led to the splitting up of one god into many. To derived through mediums from persons in the next world. A
some it was the fatherhood that appealed and he was Dagda. To good summary of these ideas can be found in Dr. Raynor C.
others his power, and he was known as Lord. To a third group Johnson's Imprisoned Splendour. A comparison between Druid-
his bringing of sunlight appeared to be most important.-Tfre ism, the witch beliefs, Brahminism and psychic studies strongly
larger the nition became and the more tribes it came to include, suggests that all were obtained in the same malrner. The original
60 6l
teachings of Christ and Buddha, stripped of the later dogma of delegated divine authority. Dagda's club was so big that it had
which has grown up round these teachings, Eay well belong to to be borne on wheels and needed eight men to carry it. This is
the same group. In fact, one fundamental belief seems to be what the mace in the House of Commons represents, It shows
common to all. If we can stand back far enough from the chatter that the king had delegated his divine power of lawgiver to the
of the world, it is easy to regard all these faiths as warring sects members assembled in Parliament, or rather, I think I am right
of one universal belief. in saying, to his representative the Serjeant at Arms; without
In witch belief it is the Lord of the Underworld, a kind of the mace the laws they passed were without authority. Parlia-
Hades or Pluto, who decides on the circumstances in which ment was by no means the only body to whom such power was
people shall be born again. Unfortunately I do not know his delegated. Generals and admirals were presented with a baton
name. I happen to have been told the name under which the by the king, not only in England, but in France also. Authority to
modern witches adore Diana, but since they are not supposed to command was passed right down from the god to the king, to
divulge it, I think it would be unfair to mention it here. Their the war leader and even to the tipstaff and police constable. It
reticence, however, seems to me to be unnecessary, for it does is probably the most dramatic survival of paganism in existence.
not appear to be the secret name of the goddess. It seems to The constable's truncheon perhaps owes its handy size and shape
translate without difficulty from a garbled Celtic into 'The to the belaying pin, snatched from the pin-rail of a vessel in time
Lady of the Summer Pastures'. No one could use it to work of trouble, but it is a symbol of delegated authority none the less.
magic against her. We find exactly the same type of phraseology It used to be elaborately painted with civic arms, the power
used in pagan times in Britain to describe the Great Mother. having been delegated by the kirg to the civic authority by
She is called 'Macha', the 'Lady of the Fertile Plain' and charter and from this to the constable. Two thousand years or so
'Cailleach', the 'Lady of the Forest'. have passed since men carved Beelzebub's giant figure in the
Beelzebub is getting left out again. It is so easy to digress in turf at Cerne Abbas (Fig. 5 (q)) and still today m"r, ir" walking
this subject. Baal then, over much of the ancient world, was a our streets carrying the image of his club. Rightly indeed did
rude Father God with a club. Somebody described him as a rus- Kipling describe England as 'Merlin's Island of Grammerie'
tic Hercules. I have to thank the Deputy Serjeant at Arms of the when such things are perpetuated here.
House of Commons for putting me on to an interesting line of I have talked about the Cerne Giant at some length in Gog-
inquiry. He wrote to ask me whether I could suggest a relation- magog, but we cannot leave him out of this discussion. He is a
ship between the Great Mace in the House of Commons and the veritable Hercules figure, a true Baal. Two hundred feet of him
mace shown in the hand of Duke William, William the Con- strides down the hillside, powerful and immodest, waving his
queror, on the Bayeaux Tapestry (fig. 5 ( t)). Of course I had monstrous club. No such picture of masculinity is known in
never thought that there could be any connection, but once the Europe. Dagda is regarded as crude, but he at least wore a
suggestion was made, the answer did not appear to be very tunic, hood and sandals; while the Cerne Giant appears nude and
difficult. Duke William's father was Robert the Devil. This does proud of it. By chance the local name of the Cerne Baal seems to
not mean that he beat his wife or cheated over money. It means have been preserved in the thirteenth-century chronicle of
tlrat he was a living representative of Lucifer, or Beelzebub. Walter of Coventry. It was Helith. This name resembles so
probably over the whole of Normandy. He was the Devil to the closely that of the Greek sun Helios that we can be reasonably
Christian priests. William the Conqueror was not born in holy certain that it had the same meaning. If so, the 'Hele' .r"*.,
wedlock, but was known as The Bastard. As living representa- from Suffolk and Essex to Stonehenge and Exeter all refer to
tive of the god, he carried Baal's distinguishing emblem, the lhim. The hill of Health, the Heel Stoie and Helions Bumpstead
club, and this is what is shown in his son's hand.l It is a symbol are a few examples. Helions Bumpstead incidentally has a
r His standard also is a pennon bearing a sun symbol, dedication to St. Andrew, who in the east of the country seems to
63
 rather to be an exceedingly rare example of Celtic work and
be more popular than Michael. If it be objected that these Hele
probably of the first century A.D. If that is so, it may well be a
names r"iaito some holy place, what could be more hgly than_a
Cernunnus, although all known pictures of him have a stag's
site dedicated to a great godl Hell itself, where the wicked souls
antlers on the head. But the Carthaginian Baal was horned. I am
were tormented in perpetual fire, seems pretty close to the flash
inclined to call the figure Nuada of the Silver Arm, who was
of Balor's eye. I hope that somebody who_lives near Helions
ruler of the Irish gods and overlord of Lugh, until he lost his
Bumpstead will make an intensive search of that area for clues in
arm in battle and was succeeded by Lugh. But in the Welsh
field names and folk tales, to see whether more cannot be learnt.
stories, Lugh and Nuada, known as Lud and Nud, are apparently
It may be more than a coincidence that a parson from one of the identical and both have a silver hand. It is probable then that we
nearby villages recently informed me that witches were still
have one of the frequent cases in Celtic mythology where one
.rum"iors in his parish. As he told me he was well acquli_nt9d
god, or goddess, is represented in three phases, or persons. Our
with the Cerne Giant and the stories connected with it, I felt he
Copgrove figure would then be a form of Lugh. Having got as
was probably right about the witches also. Whether they are
far as this, arguing to myself, I picked Crockford offthe floor and
groupr of witches organized in covens, or just- isolated women
looked up the dedication of the church. By this time I was no
i"itfti smattering of ihe old lore, we cannot tell. The religion is longer surprised at the coincidence; Copgrove church is dedi-
secret. Nearer t[e East Anglian coast at least one coven still
cated to Michael. This is, I think, the first case in which we have
exists. As I do not know its axact location, I cannot say whether
a hint of the form once taken by the sacred pagan site. I do not
Michael, Andrew or Hele is to be found there; but, if it is where I
know the age of the name, but surely it suggests that the original
think it is, there is an Andrew within the qualifyirg hour's walk.
shrine was a clump of trees. Here again we have a case where
Some Devils, whatever their names may be, carried a sword
careful local research might yield considerable fresh information.
and shield. Some months ago Mr. N. Hudleston, the folk-lorist,
sent me a photograph of the Devil's Stone at Copgrove church,
near Ripon in Yoikshire, and asked me who I thought was
,"p..r"rited by this figure with its enormous phallus. It is only
fair to him to add t[at when the photograph was shown to
another expert, he interpreted the object in questio:r as being a
portion of the female anatomy. The pho-togyph shows a very
worn carving from which I have drawn what I think I can see on
Fig. a(a). Iliseasy to und.erstan$ why_it is still known as the
Divil's Sione, for ii appears to be horned and carries both sword
and shield in the wrong hands. The Devil in popular tradition in
eastern England is lefi-handed. From this comes the old saying
of a 'left-handed gift'. The debatable object appears to me to be
the scabbard of [is sword and I know no chape, that is the
protective end to the scabbard, shown or found on any sword of
iater date than the Early Iron Age which remotely resembles
this one. The horns too are like the horns frequently found on
pictures of male heads in the Celtic art of the Continent (F.ig.
4 (b)).
i clo not think the carving dates from the Anglo-Saxon period
to which many such carvings found in churches belong. It seems
64 65
 tord of Darkness is a newcomer, pointing to a different stage
reached in an ancient belief.
The modern witches speak of this god as 'Lord of life in
death'. He is thus comparable with the Indian Siva (Fig. z (b))
who is lord bothof fertility and
of death. In the same way Kali
Chapter Six ( FiS.z(u)), one ofSiva's wives,
is murderous and comparable
with the Celtic Cailleach.
We have some difficulty in
T UC I F ER and Pan were two of Diana's lovers and through the identifying a Celtic god who
I ,.ourre of time their qualities and attributes became mixed. was sole Lord of the Under-
According to Dr. Gardnei, however, the modern witches pay-the world. In fact the Celtic belief
greatest reverence to a third. This g!d's name is not revealed, in an Underworld seems to be
6ut he is Lord of the Underworld. It is not quite clear whether somewhat vague. There is a
the modern witches distinguish between Diana and her da-ughter, much clearer picture of Tirnan
Aradia, in the way thaithe Italian witches did. In fact the Og, the huppy land of youth,
daughter seems to hur" dropped out of the modern ritual' She over the Western Ocean and
wou"ld have been only one aspect of the Great Mother in any beyond the Sunset. This may
case. Whether then ii is Diani or Aradia who goes to visit the represent a true Otherworld,
Lord of the Underworld, is not a great matter. One of them but I am byno means convinced
went and after being divested of her clothing by-the g^uards of the that it is not a legend relating to
seven gates, in a iranner which suggests to Dr. Gardner the early crossings of the Atlantic
Dance"of tfr. Seven Veils, is greeted by the Lord of the Under- Ocean. There is a Welsh
world, scourged and made his mistress. This *y_th must be.a Hades, Cythraul, or the Abyss.
variant of thi't of Ceres, Pluto and Proserpina and is known in This Abyss, however, accord-
one form or another all over the ancient world. It is a myth i.rg to the Mabinogion, had
representing the change of th_e seasons. It is curious, however' three successive rulers, Arawn,
that Diana,"the Queen of Night, should be mated with the Lord Pwyll and his son, Pryderi.
of Darkness and one would think that there had been some con- Pywll is spoken of as Lord, or
fusion here. The whole object of the union was to bring-about Head, of Annwn and was mar- Fig. 7. (a) Kali, (b) Siva, from In-
the return of fertility in the spring of the coming yeg. f-ig_ht-Tf ried to Rhiannon, a Great dian bronzes. Note Kali's gar-
land of human heads, the skulls,
Darkness should hive been loveis, not Dark and Dark' I think Mother goddess, inthe corect snakes, and that each figure has a
the answer must be that there was once only one god of Darkness manner. The whole matter is, 'third eye'.
and that was female, an aspect of the Great,Mother. With the however, far from clear. Pywll,
change to male gods, however, there were two and these had to with his yellow-headed white hell-hounds, may be the best
be mlted to make sense of an impossible situation. Diana now candidate and we can link him up with a more famous king of
intercedes for her votaries with the Lord of Darkness, who all the British gods.
arranges for their rebirth under conditions p]9a9!ng to h-i1 *lt- Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who has great skill in choosing suit-
tress."At one time she would have seen to all this herself' The able places for excavation, once explored a Romano-British
66 67
temple on a hill at Lydney in Gloucestershire, whrlh went a lo$ heads. All these manifestations are like the Loch Ness monster
*"y to*ards destroying the accepted pictutg 9f Roman Britain some people see them, others do not. Those who have not seei
o'ecoming an economic derelict in the second half of the fourth them are told by faith that there could be no such things and
century."The big temple aPpears to have been built after the flatly refuse to take the slightest interest in the woids of
great invasion o? Britain by Picts, Scots and Saxons in 966 or apparently credible witnesses. I know people who have seen the
5OZ. th" temple was that of Nodens, who is a figure *9 know Loch Ness monster and apparitions of the Black Dogs and have
already. Nodens is Nuada of the Silver Hand, who was E"g oI no reason to suppose that their eyesight was faulty or that they
the Irish gods, in what we may call the second stage of belief, were not telling the truth. These are phenomena which people
when Dagda was still there but the gods had become more see and are not the product of hangovers from whisky, nor the
cultured. Nuada is Nudd in the Welsh form of the name, but he result of tricks of light. Most black dogs are seen at night and
is also 'Ludd lar,v ereint', Ludd of the Silver Hand. Ludd is they are heard also. I do not know the explanation, but irn con-
clearly Lugh of the Irish Tales, but he is also then Nuada with vinced that when it is found, it will be in accordance with a law of
his siiver }iand. The temple of Nodens is thus a temple of Lugh. nature, even if this law has not yet been formulated.
There are two remarkable things about the Lydney temple, There is a ghost white dog reported from the lane outside this
both exceeding the importance of the lateness of its date. In the house of Hole where I am writing. At least four people claim to
first place there was a remarkable number of representations-of have seen it in recent years, without any previous knowledge
dogs. One of these has a human face, while a second is a really that it was supposed to be there. when we had just movedln
finE bronze casting of a wolf-hound. These votive dogs did n_ot here three y-ears ago, my wife and I noticed a large white dog
come there Uy acciaent. They were offerings to a- god who standing at the gate and looking in in a friendly manner. It was a
regarded dogs as of special importance and presumably owned collie, with streaks of yellow on its head and neck. I asked my
hounds himself. tenant, who farms the surrounding land, whose dog it *ur ,ri
The second point is the character of the building itself. It is he replied that there was no dog like that for miles around. we
not built in the ordinary Classical form of a sacred inner building have no dog. We have not seen the white dog again.
surrounded by cloisters. It is more in the form of a _great hall Here you have a story which is of no importance, but there is
surrounded by alcoves, or bays. Sir Mortimer in his report a sequel and I think it needs some explanation other than
suggests, no doubt rightly, that these !ryt were intended for coincidence. Some months later when the vegetation, born of
p.o[t" to take the sacred temple sleep. N9{ery then was Lord years of neglect, on the slope below this house died down, I
tf ttr" Land of Sleep, childhood's'Land of Nod', or Nudd. And found an open trench cut into the hill for the foundations of a
he was a lord of hounds. It seems pretty clear that he is the same shed. As I never neglect the chance of looking at a section which
as Pwyll, Lord of Annwn. might produce archaeological information, I got down into it
Fabulous dogs are not really our concern here and I know that and examined its sides. There were numerous animal bones
they are being intensively studied by my friend, Miss Theo sticking out, some bits of medieval pottery, which might have
Brown, but we cannot leave this part of the story without paying been expected since the site is known to have been occupied
them some attention. Ghost dogs are mostly black. Some are since the beginning of the thirteenth century, and a fragment of a
friendly and protective: others are bringers of terrible misfor- glazed floor-tile. At a guess this tile dates from about l9do. on
tune and death. The Barguest, presumably the burghgeist, of the tile was stamped a large part of the body of a white dog.
eastern England is of this kind and so are some of the Black Since that time I have spent many hours digging away at the side
'of the trench with a trowel in the
Dogs of D&on. Those of Lincolnshire, however, are protective. hope of finding enough pieces
The phantom dogs of the Western Isles and apparently those of of tile to make up the whole picture. I have found many interest-
east bevon are like Pwyll's hounds, white with yellow on their ing things, which need not be enumerated now, and a large
68 69
number of small pieces of tile. I never find a large piece and have country have it on them. The hare is the commonest type of
never found the Complete picture, but I have most of it (F.ig. S). animal into which a witch is supposed to be able to change and in
The tiles fitted together on the floor of a building, I think of a which form she could only be killed by u silver bullet. It is
private mortuary chapel. They formed a pattern of white circles thought by some psychologists to be a symbol of the psyche, or
soul, and is known to have been a creature of the moon goddess.
\Mhat of the white dog? On the tile he is much larger and more
important than the hare. If she represents the moon, then surely
he represents the sun. Both symbols are found on the tile. Does
it not seem probable that the tiles were set in the chapel by
people who were devotees of both the old and the new religions?
We know who they were and the hare and the dog do not occur
on their armorial bearings. That Christianity and the Dianic
cult both existed in Devon in the fourteenth century is shown by
the Bishop's Register of Exeter. The bishop found the monks of
Frithelstock Priory worshipping a statue like 'the unchaste'
Diana at an altar in the woods and made them destroy it.
Now a student of solid fact, a scientist, will see no connection
between the tiles with their white dogs and the ghost white dog
in the lane. But there may be a real connection. tf we may trust
some of the theories evolved by those who study psychical re-
search, then some people can produce phantasms at will in the
same general way as television pictures are produced. Others can
see these phantasms as apparently real objects. We can see a
possibility that when the Holcombs sold Hole to the Bartletts in
1605, or when the chapel was destroyed by fire, as I infer from
the information I have gleaned by excavation, somebody
thought with sufficient force and visualized 'the white dog of the
Holcombs will haunt the place now'. And so it did. I do not
believe necessarily that this is what happened, but I do not deny
the possibility. No one has done enough work on these subjects
Fig. 8. Reconstruction of floor-tile from Hole, Branscombe. These tiles to produce a reliable answer. Whether it is the correct answer or
"*".. first stamped with a wooden die; the design was then roughly
not does not matter to our study, but the tiles do. They point
painted in white and lastly covered with pale olive-green glaze' The clearly to the white dogs of Pwyll, or Nodens, still being remem-
iil", approximately d1 i". square and probably mid-fourteenth
"r"in date. Reconitructed from fragments of six tiles. bered and regarded as important in the fourteenth century and to
century
their relationship with the sun still being understood.
on a flreen background. In one half of the circle was a white dog The belief in the Black Dog is very prevalent in East Anglia
and in the other a white hare, flanked by the sun and moon and it is usually known as a shuck, or ghost. On the coast of
symbols. I cannot find anyone who knows this type of tile, but Norfolk, however, as we learn from the late W. A. Duff in
tile dog and hare is a veiy common theme in Romano-British Highzuays and Byways of East Anglia, it was known as Moddy
art. Inilumerable handles of pocket knives found all over the Dhoo. This adds to the evidence which suggests that the Iceni
70 7r
were 'Q' Celts, speaking a form of Gaelic. Moddy Dhoo is the honest kirrg of the Demons, into some kind of infernal regions.
Gaelic Madadh Dubh, Black Dog, and thus presumably 2,ooo Bali, who was obviously a god of this earth before the misfortune
years old. overtook him, is probably our Balor, or Baal, and was therefore
I will give one other instance of the appearance of a phantom the sun god of one race demoted by succeeding people. This
dog. This time it was a large black one. Parson Thornton, whose "
theme runs right through our investigations. If we knew the
fascinatin g Reminiscences of an Old Deaonshire Clergymaa is well name of the witches' Lord of the LJnderworld, we might well find
worth reading for the clear picture it gives of the Devon that it was the same Beelzebub mentioned in the witch trials.
country life of about a hundred years ago, was a great dis- The Lord of the Underworld, as I have said, as such does not
believer in ghosts and suchlike phenomena. As a young man he figure much in our Celtic mythology, except the Welsh Arawn,
was at Selworthy, a little village between Porlock and the sea, Pwyll, and Pryderi, his son, who succeeded him. But we have
where conditions were very simple. One day a large black dog seen reason for thinking that Nudd served this purpose. At any
rushed past a woman, who was much upset by the incident. rate he seems to have had the ordering of the Hounds of Hell.
Thornton hurried to calm her down, ild on the way back fell Since, however, Nudd and Ludd are apparently the same, ffid
into conversation with the sexton. 'I know all about it,' said the Ludd is the Irish Lugh, Nudd is also a god of Light. There is
sexton and went on to explain his knowledge. He said that a perhaps no distinction between the Lords of Light and Darkness
coffin with a woman's body in it was being camied to the church- at this stage and the Great Mother, the Lady of the Dark, has
yard for burial. On the way one of the coffin-handles came loose. dropped out of the story. By one of those curious twists which
The sexton picked up a stone and hammered it tight. He believed are so commonly met with by students of old religions, the
that the point on the shank of the coffin-handle had pierced the Christian Devil, the Lord of Darkness, became known as Lucifer
woman's skull and let her spirit out. The sexton knew all about it and Beelzebub, both of whom were Lords of Light. This is the
and so thought he knew the connection between the ghost dog and usual fate of the gods of one religion when it is mastered by
the woman's spirit. What this connection was we shall have to another and can be used as a kind of rough gauge when studying
guess. There seem to be two possibilities. The first is that the the succession of beliefs. The gods of one stage become the
sexton believed in the druidic idea of the transmigration of demons of the next.
souls. In this case he thought that the woman's soul had been
reincarnated in the body of a black dog. The second idea is that
the black dog had been sent by the Lord of the Underworld to
fetch away the woman's soul. Other Devon stories of the effect on
elderly or sick persons of seeing black dogs suggests that the
second idea is the correct one. Accordingtothe witches'Vangelo,
Diana used a dog as a messenger. It will be most interesting to
see what Theo Brown makes of this problem. In any case we
have in this Selworthy story, reported by * unimpeachable wit-
ness, a case of dual beliefs being held by a man who had a
position of some standing in a Christian community.
The Lord of the Underworld is of course common to many
religions and in some cases appears to have been a god of the
Upper levels, who became pushed down to look after the affairs
of the dead when his devotees were conquered by another race.
In Indian theology Vishnu is believed to have trodden Bali, the
l2
 witch-hunters appear to have ignored thisfact. Now the origin of
this particular idea is obvious. Artemis was the Great Mother of
beast as well as man. Great numbers of statues representing
Diana in this guise exist (FiS. I (b), p.qt). They are found,
from time to time, from Asia Minor to Marseilles. They do not
represent the Huntress Diana with her bow and deer; but Diana
as the Great Mother. Here she is shown with the top half of her
Chapter Seven body entirely covered with superimposed rows of breasts. The
lower half has a corresponding series of tiers of beasts of various
kinds. Diana, as the Vangelo says, was Queen of Witches all!
These beasts are her familiars. Whether the modern witches
f F the reader has studied Professor E. O. James's Prehistoric still have familiars I do not know; but isolated cases still existed,
LReligion,he will have formed some idea of the huge area which within twenty miles of Cambridge in this century, of women
was once under the sway of the Great Mother belief. From India who were said by the villagers to have them. The witch was
into Asia Minor, over most of the Mediterranean lands and simply representing the Great Mother, the Artemis of the
right up to the Channel Islands innumerable objects have been Ephesians.
found to testify to this belief. They range from thousands of little The cult of the Great Mother was so long-lived and so wide-
statuettes to menhirs with no more on them than an indication of spread that it would be quite impossible to reduce it to a few
a pair of breasts. The cult goes far back in time before the Age of chapters in a short book. Many peoples had different names for
Bronze. How far back it will be found to extend, nobody can tell, the deity and for every real name there were many epithets used
but it would not be an extravagant guess to say that the little to indicate which deity was being mentioned, without actually
ivory female carvings found over much of Palaeolithic Europe using the real name. As I said before, this was to prevent hostile
may belong to the same group of ideas. Right across the Atlantic, magic being employed through the use of her name. It is possible
on the islands of the Caribbean, the little female statuettes are also that many devotees were too frightened to use a word of
found with polished stone axes, which remind one strongly of such great power.
similar objects from the eastern end of the Mediterranean. It As we have seen before, the Great Mother cult was supplanted
would not be an exaggeration to say that the belief in the Great in time by the belief in a Greater F ather. Whether this represents
Mother covered the whole of the ancient world, not everywhere a true evolution in belief, like that from totemism to anthropo-
at the same time, of course, but at some stage of the develop- morphism, iley be doubted. The pictures in the Palaeolithic
ment of man. caves suggest that the male totemistic shaman figure was at least
The worship of Diana, or Artemis, is a development of this as, and perhaps more, important in the ideas of the early hunting
Great Mother belief and this is at the root of the religion of tribes as that of the female fertility figures indicated by small
witches. One of the chief tests of the witch-hunters, as Dr. carvings. It was more important to hunters to get their game
Murray tells us, was the presence of the bodies of supposed than to see its reproduction. It is probable that two conceptions
witches of extra teats on which they were believed to feed their existed, from very early times, side by side. In one the male
animal familiars. These teats of course had no real existence; element was predominant, in the other the female.
they were non-malignant tumours of some kind, due to abnor- With the taming of animals, the female idea of Motherhood
mal cell development of the body. But their existence was became increasingly important. The fertility of the stock was the
enough to condemn the unfortunate woman to the stake. There vital need of the nomadic tribe. Unless their beasts increased in
are just as many of these growths on male bodies today, but the numbers, how could they eat them? They might milk them, of
74 75
course, but they must eat something. The Great Mother must in India and Black Annis in England were blood-thirsty monsters.
see to it. But the Father still h*gabout in the background. Now men, however attractive the queens may have been and
After all he had to help and who kept the wolves and lions offthe however much they enjoyed royal authority over the other men
stock? of the tribe, have a rooted objection to being murdered in a
As time went on nomads tended to become more anchored to revolting manner to make way for a rival. Even the idea that
certain areas. Grass was better in some places than others, all the their mangled bodies would fertilize the land can have had but
year round. Nomads tended to settle down in these places. First little appeal. But custom is strong. I do not think matriarchal
they put a ring of stones round the bottom of their tent to keep it society broke up easily. All through long ages people were torn
from flapping in the wind. Then they built a wall upon them to to pieces yearly to satisfy a religious belief, which seems com-
keep the wind out. Finally they made the whole thing into a pletely absurd to us. It takes a praying mantis to enjoy this kind
permanent hut. As the men were out after their stock by day, the of thing. Even spiders have found a way out of the difficulty.
women slowly evolved a primitive culture of edible vegetable I think matriarchy was overthrown by war. This was not a
fruits. Little by little, by trial and error, agriculture became first war between men and Amazons; although this classical myth
a support to stock-breeding, ffid then of greater importance. may retain traces of some such happening. I fancy it came about
Agriculture was for many centuries the woman's business. Not through the worship of dead heroes. The queen's mate had of
only was she the cook and the support of the man, she became necessity to be head of the young tribal warriors. As long as
the boss. It was natural therefore for Great Mother belief to weapons were of a Stone Age kind and fighting was mostly a
dominate the religious ideas of the early villager and then the matter of shooting with weak bows and throwing stone- or bone-
primitive townsman. But town never ousted country. Nomads tipped spears, casualties were not heavy and the hero had little
might be getting fewer; but hunting tribes still exist today. chance to show what he could really do. But when efficient cut-
In the lands where woman's rule became predominant, ting weapons, particularly cutting swords, evolved in the Bronze
descent was through the mother. The chieftainess, or queen, was Ag., war took on a more serious aspect. The fort was made to
all-important as long as she was capable of breeding, and even stop the enemy getting to close quarters and the enemy stormed
afterwards as the power to knock her daughter over the head it. Now the man who led the attack on the wall, or the fellow
with a rolling-pin if she did not behave. She probably became the who stood, on the wall and beat off the rush by his determined
intermediary with the Great Mother; the gnarled old priestess, bravery, began to assume greater stature than the woman, who
whose word was law. But the queen was the earthly representa- only bore children and waited anxiously in her hut for her throat
tive of the Great One, the living symbol of fertility, ns long as to be cut, if the defence gave way. The dead hero, who had
her powers of child-bearing lasted. She had to be fertile, or never been beaten, became something worth remembering.
nothing would be fertile. If she were not, the Great Mother Men saw, or thought they saw, his figure fighting beside them.
must have turned away her face and disaster threatened the tribe. Then men began to murmur, ''Who beat offthose stinking swinel'
Therefore the queen had to have a mate to make her fertile. 'We did and old so-and-so was there to help us. I saw him.' 'So
Much has been written on this question by many authorities, but did I.' Little by little old so-and-so became a god.To the deeds
Sir James Fraser and Charles Graves are the names which are he had done became added those of many dead warriors before
most closely associated with it. and after his lifetime. In this way the great Aryan god, Indra,
The usual plan seems to have been for the queen to have a was evolved. When the Aryans had overrun, conquered and
mate for a limited time. This might be for a year, or for seven settled much of India, this great hero, of a distant past and
years. After this time had elapsed, a new mate was chosen and different land, married the Great Mothers of the conquered
the old one usually was dispatched in a more or less brutal man- Dravidian peoples, Durga and Kali. They had not kept the
ner. It is not for nothing that such goddesses as Durga and Kali Aryans out; Indra was ,oo tr?;g for them. They took second
16
place. Indian mythology is obviously very confused for these Boadicea, so Tacitus tells us, was queen of the lceni. The
goddesses were also wives of Siva. Iceni at that time were a great tribe. Before the new cut in the
However the change-over was slow in coming and sporadic in Fens was made to let the Ouse out past Denver Sluice to King's
distribution. Unconquered peoples retained their matriarchy Lynn and so isolated them from easy access to the northward,
long after others had gone over to the rule of men and the wor- their territory appears to have included all Norfolk, Suffolk, part
ship of a Greater Father together with a Great Mother. Some of Cambridgeshire and even, as the old name of Boston seems to
peoples, especially in Africa, still killed their kings after set show, part of Lincolnshire. They were an old Iron Age people
periods of rule, simply because the king had had to take over the and not Belgae, who, as Caesar tells us, had begun to settle
function of ensuring fertility to the tribe. This was a stage at southern Britain about a generation before his time in Gaul and
which, if Margaret Murray is right, the Normans had arrived visits to Britain. That is the lceni were settled in eastern E g-
at the time of William Rufus. How the Normans, a tough, land long before the birth of Christ. They were an old Celtic
vigorous, warlike people from the north, had become infected people and their name was once, I think, 'Eachanaidh', the
with a disease which was clearly not common in their homeland, people of the Horse. Before the invasions of the Belgae, I fancy
is not easy to explain. They must have caught it in Normandy their lands extended right down the Chiltern ridge and over the
itself. I cannot recall anything in the Sagas to suggest that chiefs Upper Thames. The Icknield Way is named after them. Owing
or kings were murdered for religious reasons, except in times to the pressure from the Belgae, they were squeezed into a
very long before the Norman Conquest of England. smaller area and a section of the tribe seems to have been com-
In Britain, in England of today, the change was apparently pelled to migrate into western Scotland, where they became
taking place at the time of the Roman Conquest. Two recorded known to the Roman geographer Ptolemy as the Epidii, from
stories seem to show this clearly. The first is that of Boadicea the Gaulish 'epos' and Greek 'ippos', a horse. There they are
(Boudicca), queen of the Iceni; the second that of Cartimandua, still known in Knapdale, Kintyre and the islands as MacEacherns,
queen of the Brigantes. I have mentioned this before in some the sons of the Horse. There some of them still retain vague
other book, but will do so again, for [ find it takes about twenty memories of being connected with horses in some supernatural
years before people believe anything I say. It does not matter way. The difference between lceni and MacEacherns on the one
how reasonable or unreasonable the matter is. It is simply a hand and Epidii on the other is only the difference between the
question of inertia and the difficulty people experience in grasp- Gaelic and Welsh forms of the Celtic speech.
ing anything that they had not been taught before. The dead In about the year e.o. 6I, after the conquest of southern E g-
weight of the mass of information crammed into the heads of land by the armies of the Emperor Claudius, the king of the
students to enable them to pass exams makes their minds far less Iceni, Prasutagus, died, leaving, so the Romans affirmed, part of
flexible than those of people who have not had to suffer under his kingdom to them. Tacitus tells how officials went to extract
this system. Some years ago I sent a copy of some papers I had their portion of the legacy and in the process scourged Boadicea
written to a friend in America, who was interested in the subject. and violated her daughters. Instantly the Iceni rose in arms and
He replied thanking me and added that he would never have in a furious campaign wrought more trouble to Rome than it had
thought of my answer; but then, unlike him, I had never had to ever experienced in Britain. Colchester, St. Albans and London
endure the tedium of taking a doctorate. I should hate to be were all stormed and sacked. Great numbers of female captives
known as 'doctor' and be called upon suddenly to deliver a baby were sacrificed by Boadicea to Andrastea; apparently Adrasteia,
in a railway carriage, or a bus, with no more qualification for lwho was a somewhat indefinite character in classical mythology,
the job than a doctorate of philosophy! But I must end this but a moon goddess in trgypt. We are not concerned here with
unwarranted digression and return to Boadicea ( I dislike the the defeat of Boadicea and the ravaging of eastern Britain; but
correct name, Boudicca) and Cartimandua. we are concerned with the causes of the revolt. It seems
18 l9
perfectly clear that Prasutagus had no right to will away the terri- Had Rome not intervened, Venutius would have remained kit g.
tory, or anything else, because he was only king by right of No doubt there would have been uprisings in support of legiti-
being the husband of the queen. The Romans, it seems, had not mist candidates who had married into the royal female line, for
understood this and had committed the greatest sacrilege in this happened in Scotland. Centuries after a patriarchal Scottish
scourging the living representative of the Great Mother and king had, by marriage to a Pictish princess, introduced male
forcibly putting themselves in the position of mates to the descent into a matriarchal country, husbands of the legitimate
daughters by whom the sacred line descended. Or they may have female heir to the throne fought in attempts to establish their
understood perfectly well and have done it to show that claim to it. I think I wronged Cartimandua in anotherbook, The
matriarchy was ended. They had made a trifling mistake if this Painted Men, by saying she was a licentious woman. According
were the case; it was not ended in the north for a thousand to her religious upbringing she was no doubt entirely respect-
years. able. She was the living representative of the Great Mother and
The case of Cartimandua also involved the Romans in wars. was required to change her husband at the appropriate time.
She was queen of the Brigantes, who were also a pre-Belgic tribe. Venutius had probably completed his correct term of office,
They seem to have occupied most of the country from Humber to which in lreland appears to have been seven years, and it was
Cheviot. Cartimandua was a friend of Rome, or more probably time for him to make way for a younger man. Presumably he did
an enemy of the Belgae. In a.o. 51, lvhen the Belgic hero, Cara- not fancy whatever was the traditional termination of his career
tacus, was finally defeated by the Romans, after being driven out among the Brigantes; and the tribe itself, in troublous times,
of southern Britain and making a long stand in the Welsh moun- preferred to have a master of war at their head, rather than a
tains, he fled to Cartimandua for protection. He did not seek less experienced tactician, however efficient he may have been in
protection from the king, whose name was Venutius, but from the production of royal children. I must say I rather hope it was
the head of the tribe. At least that is the interpretation I put on the standard-bearer's head that Sir Mortimer Wheeler found at
the incident. The queen handed him over to the Romans. No the bottom of the ditch of Venutius's stronghold. Venutius may
doubt they were gratified by the present of a man who had been have been a bit of a'blimp', as the enormous extent of his forti-
as elusive and dangerous as Owen Glendour was to prove in a fications at Stanwick seems to suggest, but at least he did not
later age. Some time later, Cartimandua wished to change her hand over a gallant soldier to the enemy.
husband for his standard-bearer. This was probably no more In southern Britain then, Great Mothers were going out of
than the accepted matriarchal custom, but Venutius was 'a fashion soon after the beginning of the Christian era. In Ireland
master of war;. Cartimandua evidently was unable to sway the th.y remained, in folk belief at any rate, long enough for tales
tribe against him. She appealed to the Rornans for help. They about them to be written down by Christian monks. Some dis-
sent a force to rescue her and she fades from the picture. The tricts probably retained the worship until the conversion of the
war, however, remained with Rome and it proved a long and Iand to Christianity. But no religion is accepted everywhere at
painful business. the same time. Pockets of believers survive here and there and
Now the Brigantes were the people of Brigid, who was a hand their religion on generation after generation. Sometimes
Great Mother goddess venerated not only in England, but in indeed the pendulum swings once more and the supplanted belief
Ireland also. She was so important that she could not be dis- returns. This has happened more than once with the devotion
placed and, under Pope Gregory's dictum, she became a saint. to the Great Mother, but never again did it re-establish the
She remains one of the most revered saints in Ireland today. In matriarchal system.
the case of the Brigantes and Cartimandua we appear to see the I think there was only one Great Mother and it is her local
change from matriarchy to patriarchy not only taking place, as names and epithets which cause confusion. We are dealing
in the example of Boadicea and the Iceni, but almost completed. with such a great length of time, at least four thousand years'
80 8r
and with such wide diffusion of peoples, that of course there are as many opinions as to what it represents as there are experts on
many names. The essential belief, spreading probably frory only that particular period.
one centre, was quite simple. There was one Great Mother of In the Roman provinces of Gaul and Britain there was a
All, she had made everything that lived and grew, she was at development from the three aspects of the Great Mother and
first both Darkness and Light. Then she divided offLight into a she became three Mothers. Presumably this was the result of a
separate personality and made him her husband, but he was in no misunderstanding of the original idea; but, however it came
sense her equal. He might be the Sun and give offmore light and about, statues of the three Matronae are quite commonly found.
heat, but she was the fount of life and chose only to show herself In Mrs. Brogan's Roman Gaul we are told that they survive
dimly as the Moon. Things grew mysteriously in the night, for today in France as three fairies.
she made them grow. The love-making took place in the moon- In Britain, however, a much greater complication appears to
light, or in the dark. It was not often that children or animals have occurred, for since the Great Mother had three aspects and
were born in the day-time, but in the hours when the Great three apparent personalities, if there were three Great Mothers
Mother held her sway. Without her influence nothing was born all of one aspect, they must obviously have each possessed two
and nothing grew. In her hours of rule old people died. She was other aspects, or personalities. You then get nine goddesses out
both destroyer and creator. This I think was the whole of the of one. This is probably the origin of the frequent occurrence of
original belief; everything was just trappings. Of course she Nine Maidens, particularly in connection with the names of
"19-:
gave success in love, for fertility was her business; and woman, sacred springs. In Scotland in particular these maidens are often
is her representative, had to be importuned, as she herself had associated with Brigid. There were probably no other maidens
to be importuned. The moon grew from the dark, swelled to full originall], save Brigid alone. It is interesting to note that the
size and then dwindled away again; so did mankind. Thus, as Teutonic goddess of war became nine Valkyries.
Robert Graves has demonstrated in his Greeh Myths and other A friend of mine, who has now been dead a long time, the late
works, the Great Mother came to be regarded as having three Mansfield Forbes of Clare College, Cambridge, was fascinated
aspects, the New Moon, the FulI Moon and the Waning Moon. by these Nine Maidens and hunted for them all over the country.
So there were three aspects of the Great Mother and she appears His friends believed that he made a habit of driving up to country
to us, if we do not know this fact, as three distinct goddesses. houses, ringing the bell, and asking whoever came out if they
Each of these goddesses has a different name and many different had any Nine Maidens in the neighbourhood. As he habitually
epithets in every area where she was worshipped. Where tribes wore spectacles mended with sealing-wax and pipe<leaners and
have mingled, either by conquest or in other ways, the numbers was often clad in a tattered kilt and not much else, it is remark-
of goddesses increase, three at each mixing of the population. able that he was never arrested as a dangerous vagabond. I do
gach of these has the attributes given to her by her original not think that he ever published his results and am doubtful
tribe. Yet all these goddesses are really only one. The more fre- whether they would help us much if he had; but the Nine Maidens
quent the conquests of a given area, the more complicated and their association, not only with Brigid, but with a dragon,
become its gods, until something drastic comes along like are certainly part of our Great Mother picture. The dragon may
Christianity or Mohammedanism and sweeps the whole lot well be the same old beast who was cast out by Michael and
into the limbo, where they remain as sad ghosts in folk memory. worsted by Indra.
Therefore our study cannot possibly be easy, or clear-cut. We are I once went with Manny Forbes on his quest for Nine Maidens.
really only scratching about in a forgotten midden for neglected ,This was not a long business, but a simple visit to some springs,
scraps. Proof of anything must be almost impossible to obtain. known as 'Nine Wells', at Whittlesford, a few miles from Cam-
Even when the representation of a god or goddess comes to bridge. There were not nine wells, only a few water-holes in a
light anywhere, except in a classical setting, there are usually large field. Manny expressed his determination to perform some
82 8s
kind of ritual ablution in them. Layard, the psychologist, who destroyed long a1o, but are described in Sir Cyril Fox's
was one of the partlr hastily remarked, 'All right, Manny, but Archaeology oftfu Cambridge Region. Each barrow contained an
are you quite sure you want to have a babyi' The preparations important Iron Age burial in a large box tomb, of the type I
for the ritual were instantly abandoned. excavated at Snailwell some yearq ago and described in Tlu
Painted Men.
l.Iine Wells then was obviously near to the home of an impor-
tant lron Age family. Four such localities within a circle of
fifteen miles radius-the Bartlow Hills, Lord's Bridge, Snailwell
and Nine Wells-are all valley sites and close to water. They
were evidently the homes of chieftains, or duinwassails, in the
age when the continental civilization of Rome had begun to
creep over the country, but before the British had become com-
pletely romanized. Nine Wells is not within our 'hour's walk'
)rt'bh '\t
distance of Wandlebury Camp, the only really important Iron
Age stronghold for many miles, but it is less than two, and the
.1.-oo
i-',p'i?irrre N ?i three-mile circle is quite arbitrary. The hour's walk circle round
I

t..,
l

^l* hn Wandlebury Camp contains more traces of the old gods than
\_T_ any area I have yet examined; but it is improbable that it is
-@yo*DLEBu unusual in this respect. A careful collection of information round
o _ry-.- T,:g= _$-,:: about other obvious Iron Ag" sites would almost certainly
produce similar results all over the country. Moreover the
information has largely been written down already and it is only
a question of collecting it round a focus. There is no need for
extensive training in archaeology, nor for expensive excavation,
Fpq fl-., the material is available, in libraries or tithe maps, for anyone
zi'. ,.iP'"'
riiitre - ? w0 who has the time and enthusiasm to look for it.
grvetl$:_;1, Over the low hill to the east of Nine Wells lies the church of
St. Mary at Whittlesford. Over the south doorway, in the side
r0 of the tower, is a round-headed Norman, or possibly late Saxon,
window. The head of the window consists of a single irregular
stone, carved on the face of it with the figure of a naked woman,
Fig. 9. Sketch map of the country within a six-mile radius of Wandle- sitting facing the observer in an indelicate posture. Over her
bury. Other groups of Andrew dedications are found outside this area
leans a nude male figure, with moustache and beard (Fig. to).
and appear to be related to important Romano-British sites. A
Church with dedication to Andrewi S : Shiela-na-gig; M : Mag's,
- Such female figures are known as Shiela-na-gigs and are quite
Meg's or Maggot's Hill; O : Church with no significant dedication; common on churches. But it is rare to find a male figure asso-
O - Iron Age Fort; - - - : Presumed Iron Age Trackway. ciated with the female. The Whittlesford carving clearly
represents the Great Mother and her mate, Baal, Lucifer, or
This rather ridiculous incident serves as an introduction to a I wiatever he happened to be called.
district full of traces of the ancient gods. Close beside Nine Although these Shiela-na-gigs appear most indecent to
Wells there used to be a group of barrows. These were modern eyes, it is clear that they did not do so to churchmen of
84 85
the Middle Ages. They come from priories and nunneries as well Frenchmen, who were devotees of the witch cult, appears to
as from parish churches. Some of them are not ancient stones have encouraged a revival of popular beliefs which \,l'ere at least
which had to be included owing to the veneration paid to them hidden in Anglo-Saxon times. Attempts have been made to blame
by the villagers. They were cut the Norsemen for this revival; but this seems to be wrong. There
to be included in the design of is little evidence for Mother Goddesses in the Sagas; although
the church. No one could pre- there may be a little which points to the veneration of the reproduc-
tend that the Whittlesford tive powers of the stallion. In fact it seems more probable that
object was not intended to be fertility beliefs were introduced from the British Isles, or France,
seen. The stone was cut to fit into the North at about the same time that William established
the window and its position is his rule in England. Wiltiam, as we have already seen, was the
such that one feels some qualms son of Robert the Devil and father of William Rufus, who is
when standing outside the thought to have been sacrificed in accordance with the old pagan
church to look at it. The only ritual.
real explanation seems to be It seems clear that, if the Mother Goddess could not be driven
that both old and new beliefs out of popular belief at the conversion to Christianity, the
were mingled together in the Gregorian instruction would have applied to her as well as to her
minds, not only of the parish- consorts. We have already seen that Brigid has become St.
ioners, but of the clergy them- Brigid. In other parts of the country, the obvious candidate was
selves. This is borne out by the actual Mother of Christ. Dedications to St. Mary are, how-
Margaret Murray's works, in ever, so numerous that it seems hardly worth while to examine
which she gives instances of them like Michael and Andrew. It is interesting, however, to
both priests and bishops being note that Whittlesford church is in fact dedicated to St. Mary and
censured, but not severely St. Andrew. The remains of a large alabaster carving of a
punished, for taking part in crowned female figure with bared breasts is still preserved in the
fertility ritual. I have already I. church. Whether this figure represented the Madonna, or St.
Catherine, there seems little doubt that it would have been
mentioned the case of the Fig. to. Two Shiela-na-gigs.
monks at Frithelstock in viewed as the Great Mother by those parishioners who were
(") Above the south door of still that way inclined. The patron saints, according to what we
Devon, who were found by the Whittlesford church, carved
bishop of Exeter venerating a to form the head of a Nor- have already learnt, would seem to be the Great Mother and
statue resembling Diana. The man window. Mabon; that is, symbolically the Moon and Sun.
remarkable thing about all this (b) Believed to The whole question of Shiela-na-gigs is somewhat confused by
have been on
is, not so much that it existed, the wall of a priory building their name. The sole authority for its use comes from an English-
for similar overlap is to be at St. Ives, Hunts, built speaking gentleman in lreland, who asked an old countryman
found in India, where the high about A.D. IOOS and des- what one of the figures was. The old man was thought to say
beliefs in Brahma combine troyed by fire in a.p. tg}7. that it was a Shiela-na-gig. This term as it stands is difficult to
with the more primitive fertil- The stone is burnt (after translate. Remembering that Erse was a dying language, being
ity cults of Siva and Mahadevi; H.J. M. Green). steadily ousted by 'quaint English' for a long time, and that
but that almost all the datable evidence points to a time later ' some enquirers are a little hard of hearingr w€ may well wonder
than the Norman Conquest for its prevalence in England. The re- whether Shiela-na-gig is the correct term at all. Some people
placement of the Anglo-Saxon kings and their supplanting by have translated it as 'the lady of the castle' and others 'the lady
86 87
of the breasts'. Since the real name of a goddess must not be turned Magog's breast into St. Margaret's Hill, after two
mentioned by believers, it is probable that the old man only used thousand years of popular regard, what a tiresome, interfering
an epithet. The first word is not difficult; if it is not simply a rascal he is: It does not take long to change a whole countryside.
girl's name, Shiela, and referring to:sonie notoriouS character in When I first worked at Cambridge there were two villages side
the neighbourhood, it seems pfobable that the'word was Sith- by side above the plain, Chishill and Crishill. Then one day one
lach (pronounced Shiela) and meant 'Holy Lady'. 'Na' simply of them appeared with a 'hall' in place of a 'hill'. 'Why have
means 'of the'. So we have 'Holy Lady of the', but what is you changed the name of your village?' I asked one of the
'Gig'i Supposing it was 'breast', the word would have been inhabitants. 'Oh, the parson wanted it,' he replied. Somebody
'cioche'r pronounced something like 'keesh'. Margaret Murray investigating the sites of old halls may well be taken in by
has pointed out that many Shiela-na-gigs have hardly any this.
breasts at all. The emphasis is on other parts of their anatomy. Let us, however, return to Magog and not fume about the
In any case 'keesh' would hardly become 'gig' in any language. desecration of her anatomy. The hills on which Wandlebury
'Castle'seems equally improbable. It seems to me that'gig'is stands are known to many thousands of Cambridge people as the
simply a form of 'Gog', of 'og', 'ug'and perhaps'hog'. It Gogs or Gogmagogs. The old countrymen call them Gogama-
appears to be a variant of God. If this is the right explanation, gogs and, although I have never heard of it, I am told that not
the old man was really giving a correct description. The figure long ago they called them Hoggogamagog hills. In a recent
represented 'the holy lady of the god' ; she was a Mother God- book called Gogrnagog, I described the legend relating to this
dess. She sits in the attitude of Baubo, in the Mediterranean place and the folk-lore connected with it, which led to the search
countries in classical times, to emphasize this side of her activi- for a hilkut giant on the slope facing Whittlesford and the
ties. Baubo of the Mediterranean is the Badb of ancient Ireland. apparent discovery of three. These figures, one of which has now
At Wandlebury and presumably Whittlesford, she was Ma Gog, been excavated Fig. 2(b), are apparently those of two males and
the Mother Goddess. one female with a horse.
Ma Gog's hills, representing her breasts, like the Cailleach's Attempts have been made to show that the figures were made
paps on Jura and the breasts of Danu in lreland, surround by glacial conditions in the Ice Ag., but these attempts explain
Wandlebury within our hour's walk circle. There are three of nothing and need not concern us here. I think that one of the
them today, but a fourth has recently been canonized and has figures is the rising sun, another the moon and the third Wandil,
lapsed from Magg's or Megg's Hill to that of St. Margaret. a demon, who has given his name to Wandlebury. The other
They are all rounded, mammiform hills and there are no others two are Magog and Gog. Magog, according to such authorities
with that name for miles in every direction. This canonizing of l
1i as Sir Cyril Fox, is earlier than the other two figures, which
-(.
places is a nuisance and used to cause great annoyance to that were probably added in the Roman period. Magog seems cer-
fine old Cambridgeshire antiquary, 'W. M. Palmer. He was tainly to have been made by the builders of the great carnp itself.
furious to find that the village of Papworth Agnes had suddenly She is a real lron Age figure comparable to certain small Danish
become Papworth St. Agnes. 'What do they want to do that and Near Eastern antiquities and perhaps dating to about
for?'he exclaimed. 'Don't they know that Agnes was a king's 2oo s.c. ( Fig. r r ) . Although the drawing of the original group of
mistress?' I forget which king it was, one of the Edwards I Magog and her horse is barbaric, yet it shows a sense of balance
fancy, but I could sympathize with my old friend's indignation. and forms a complete picture where it has not been damaged by a
This kind of smug improving of time-honoured names is a public later trackway down the side of the hill (Fig. tz)
nuisance. If Dr. Palmer had not been an indefatigable research For some reason no one had ever thought that a goddess
worker in his own area, nobody would have guessed the true might appear on the hillside. There are two great male figures
origin of the name. I hope someone will show the fellow who has still to be seen at Cerne Abbas and Wilmington in the south of
88 89
England, while others are known to have vanished from Ply- uncovering. She had been renovated apparently at the time the
mouth and Oxford in comparatively recent times. A female other two figures were cut and fresh chalk was put into her out-
figure was, however, unknown and uncontemplated. Yet we lines where they had become brown and discoloured by weather-
should have thought of it, for Irish story is full of great goddesses ing. This renovation, which incidentally covered evidence that

I
l'

t
I

I
I

Y
tll

fl
Fig. I l. :h:
,i
(a) Sketch from a painting by James Mellaart of an c K
electrum figure of a goddess found at Dorak and
believed to date about gSoO n.c. The hair style and Fig. 12. Wandlebury Goddess separated from her mount. Missing
string skirt are similar to those of the Faardal figurine portions dotted in. Compare hairstyle and position of hand with
(b). (After Hans Kjaer.) figurines from Faardal and Dorak (Fig. t t).
and tales of them survive in both English and Scottish folk-lore. her outlines had been exposed when climate was much the same
Archaeologists, however, are largely governed by what they can as now, altered some of her original appearance. When we
see and handle. The idea had grown up that hill figures were cleared her out it became plain that she was an Artemis with
always men, or horses; a female figure was abominible. WeIl, several breasts, probably four. She points to them with her right
there she is with her horse and three years of work went into her hand. In the left, like Brigid, she holds a disc, which is probably
90 9r
intended to represent the 'Apple of Life' (Fig. te). Above her Many scholars now believe that the whole episode really belongs
head, a great horned shape has not been excavated, but is to the Iron Age before the Roman Conquest of Britain and that it
probably a moon symbol. The association with the horse is most was deliberately altered to fit into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
import"irt, for not only is the horse what we might have and the histories of Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth. The
expected, if the builders of Wandlebury were lceni, the horse early part of the Chronicle is certainly not a true account and
folk; but the horse is a symbol of the sun. It seems that the pic- items appear to have been interpolated which did not even take
ture as a whole is intended to suggest that the sun is about to place in Britain, but in Ireland. Historical fact does not really
mate with the moon. Lucifer and Diana are shown here in very appear in the Chronicle before the middle of the sixth century,
primitive guise. This hippogamous, if we may call it so, idea is when the campaigns of Ceawlin have the ring of truth. It seems
not confined to Britain. Giraldus Cambrensis, when writing his quite possible then that the dealings of Vortigern with Hengist
twelfth-century account of lreland, describes in shocked terms and Hors a are garbled stories of what happened at the time of the
the induction of a king of Donegal. Although he does not more Belgic invasions, either of Britain or even of lreland. The point,
than hint at the actual mating, it is clear that the king had to however, which interests us here is the account of the marriage
behave as a stallion, going on all fours, and then, when the grey between the Celtic king, Vortigern, and Rowen, the daughter of
mare had been sacrificed, bathe in broth made from the carcass, Hengist, the horse. This looks very like another case of hippo-
drink it and eat the flesh. He was being turned into a stallion by gamy. Rowen is a name of Welsh type.
magical rites. Since the Fir Domnan, his people, were patriarchal, The whole of this hippogamous idea must be of immense age,
the rite was performed in the reverse way. In India, however, dating perhaps from a time when the horse had been domesti-
the warrior caste, the Kshatriyas, had a ceremony at the first cated only recently; but a man disguised as a horse still appears
horse sacrifice after a great rajah's accession which seems to in the witch trials of the sixteenth century, mating with the
correspond exactly with the ideas suggested by the Wandlebury women of the coven. These strange beliefs had an enormous
figure. At the asvamheda, as it was called, the rajah's lvife had to length of life. There is on the wall of the Royston Cave, that
go through a ceremony of semi-mating with a sacred stallion, curious underground artificial cavern in the chalk, amid large
which was afterwards killed. Here at such different places, numbers of carvings of a religious character dating from about
thousands of miles apart, we are evidently once again at the edge the fourteenth century, a group representing a stallion, Shiela.
of a ring of thought. The idea had started from one centre and na-gig, sun-disc and sword, which apparently show at least a
ended up in the north of Ireland and the plains of India. It is remembrance of the ritual.
clearly a thing dating from the change-over from totemism to I do not think that the hill figures at Wandlebury, or any-
anthropomorphism and explains the many examples in Greek where else, were intended to be worshipped of themselves. They
myth of gods changing into stallions to secure women ,th"y were, I think, used for a ceremony, which re-enacted some impor-
desired. Epona, a great Gaulish goddess, was believed to have tant scene in the life of the gods. They were more in the nature
been fathered by a man on a mare (-trig. q (") , p. %). No one has of a stage than of an image. But in whatever manner they were
explained satisfactorily as yet why the supposed leaders of the employed, it seems evident that the old religion was very
Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century of our era should have strongly centred close to Cambridge. It is at least curious that
been known as Hengist and Horsa,for'hengst'means ahorse and there is known to have been another giant at Oxford. Whether
'horsa' a mare. It is reasonably certain that their invasion did quite so many traces remain there as round Wandlebury can, I
not take place in the way it is described in the Anglo-Saxon feel, be left to Oxford itself to find out; but I do know that there
Chronicle and it seems probable that these two mythical heroes was once a Shiela-na-gig on an Oxford church and the name
Horsepath is found by the hill where the giant was known to
There are several variantt story of Hengist and Horsa, exist before the great Civil War.
{f" 9g
 There are so many pointers to the importance of the Wandle- caught by using a single line and hook, whether it was an
bury area in old religious custom that it may well serve as a type archaeological line, anthropological, folk-lore or any other. For
of what to look for in other districts. First there is a legend of this kind of study we need any kind of line we can lay hands on
three figures and a horse; then there are folk tales of yesterday and as many of them as possible. This is not a popular way of
relating to three giants and a horse. When we find the figures, doing things today, but it is the only way to do it.
one is a Mother Goddess with a stallion. Next the two nearest The specialist for instance may identify large numbers of
churches are dedicated to St. Andrew, who is thought to have Hercules figurines made in the same workshop. He may know
been the god Mabon, the young sun. The rising sun appears to the date within a few )rears. He may know all the classical
be associated with the moon above the Mother Goddess on the information there is about the god portrayed by these little
hillside. At Whittlesford, within about the correct distance, the figures. If, however, he knows nothing about Hiccafrith, whose
church is dedicated to St. Mary and St. Andrew, who are thought story comes from folk-lore, he is limited to saying that there
to be the Mother Goddess and Mabon respectively. On the must have been a cult of Hercules somewhere in the area. But
church tower is a carving, which apparently represents the Holy Hiccafrith is still remembered and talked about. His grave is
Lady of the god, together with the god himself. There are four still shown. He is a Hercules figure, with a wagon-pole for a
hills, which seem to have been named after the Mother God- club and a wheel, a sun symbol, as a shield. He is the trust of the
dess's breasts, and when we came to excavate that Mother Hiccas, the lceni. Furthermore he is a stone-throwing giant. His
Goddess's figure on the hill, she had three or four breasts. stones went through church walls. He is therefore hostile to the
Finally there is Nine Wells, which in other districts appears to Christian faith. Then we pull the line of witch-cult study. Diana
be associated with the Great Mother, Brigid. Our Great Mother had a lover, Lucifer. Lucifer is a sun god. Beelzebub is a sun god,
figure seems to have Brigid's attribute, the apple of life, in her Baal. Baal, turning to historical study, was portrayed as a giant
left hand. If you remove any couple of these items, you are still figure with a club. Hiccafrith then is a kind of Baal. The Hicca-
left with too many for coincidence. The epithet for the goddess frith grave is an enclosure in Marshland, which belonged to the
still clings to the countryside, after the invasions of Roman, Iceni. It was probably their summer grazing land. Hiccafrith
Saxon, Viking and Norman have rolled over it. How much more becomes the Sun husband of the Icenean moon and horse god-
must remain in other places less troubled by war and immigration. dess, Ma Gog. We get Magog from place names and we see
One other point remains before we leave this eastern area. what she was like by archaeology. In this way the former
Twenty years or more ago, Professor F. Heichelheim, now of religion of the lceni grows before our eyes. There may be mis-
Toronto, drew our attention in Cambridge to the unusual num- takes in building up the picture, but it makes sense and conforms
ber of little statuettes of Hercules of Roman date found in the to the information available. As the work progresses we shall be
area. Hercules, as we have seen, is one of the aspects in which able to add to it.
Baal was portrayed and that borne not only by the Dagda, the Now let us look at Magog again. The name, I fancy, means no
Mother Goddess Macha's wife in Ireland, but by the great figure more than Ma God, Mother God, the Great Mother, while
of the Cerne Giant in Dorset. Macha, the lady of the plain, is Dagda is just Daddad, the Great Father. In India there is
surely our Ma Gog and the Hercules figures are meant to Mahadevi, wife along with Durga, Kali, Purvati and others of
represent Dagda, who in the former Marshland territory of the Siva. Siva is, I think, a Balor, Baal, Belinus and so on with a
Iceni was known as Hiccafrith (trust of the lceni). Burning eye. He burnt off one of Brahma's five heads. Siva is
Slowly, but it seems surely, as we pick up our clues and bring worshipped in many simple Indian homes as the lingam, the
them together, they begin to form a net, and when it is at last phallus, the male principle, Mahadevi as the yoni, or female
pulled tight and drawn up on the beach, it will be found to con- principle. They are thus, on this level of thought, for they have
tain quite a lot of fishes. These fishes could never have been higher attributes, the Great Father and Great Mother. But Siva
9tl 95
 is also the great destroyer of life, and of his wives, Durga and curse is potent yet. Annis according to what we might perhaps
KaIi are especially murderous. Mahadevi appears to mean some- terrn 'Gregory's lawi became St. Ann: The lrish Cailleach
thing like Great Holy Mother and is presumably the Great apparently needed a new husband once ifr seven years. Nobody
:Mother in a more benign aspect than Kali and Durga. Neverthe- now knows the riame of the husband'of the Scottish Cailleach,
less she is probably the same goddess in origin. In lrish story we but it may have been Manannan, lord of the sea. The Cailleach,
have very much the same thing and the clue is given to us there. the lady of the forest, carried a thunderbolt, raised foul weather
The Badb, one of the great goddesses, is made to say that she and washed her dirty blanket in the whirlpool of Corrievreckan,
has more than thirty-one names. This is tantamount to saying between Scarba and Jura. On the lonely Jura shore of this gulf is
that she is all of the names we know. Brigid, Macha, Morrigan, the field of the Mare. On Jura itself are the Cailleach's Paps and
Graney, Danu, the Cailleach are just variants of the Badb. on the opposite side of the strait in l{napdale a traditional story
Macha, who comes closest in name to Ma Gog, is an epithet. tells of attempts to pull her offher horse. This is the land of the
Magh, or Machair, is a fertile plain. Macha is a great Earth Mac Eacherns, the Epidii, the People of the Horse.
goddess; but she is also Dagda's wife and the wife of a Druid, As I have said before, the Epidii seem to have been a branch of
who is obviously a later addition. One of the myths of Macha the Iceni, pushed out of their homelands by the Belgic invasions.
involves her in a race against horses when she was pregnant. If one may make a reasoned guess, they had emigrated from the
She wins the race, but gives birth to a child and dies, cursing the country round about the Uffington White Horse. ln Gogmagog I
men of Ulster with the pangs of childbirth in times of crisis. gave reasons for thinking that the fine, or old lady, who rode on a
Macha is linked then with horses and childbirth, corresponding, white horse to Banbury Cross in the nursery rhyme was the same
it seems, to Ma Gog in this respect. Mahadevi is not, as far as I Cailleach and Lady Godiva was Gog diva, the holy lady of Gog,
know, linked with horses, but she is linked with female fertility. Magog. All these goddesses seem to me to be one and the same
It may be Mahadevi who was represented by the rajah's wife at deity. The veiling of Godiva in her long hair seems to me to be
the Asvamheda ceremony. an echo of the Gruagach, the fair-haired one of Western Scot-
Kali and the Cailleach, whose name is variously pronounced land, who, as I have been assured, would appear out of the mist
Calyick, Calyuck or Colyuck, have much in common. The and lure young men to their deaths. In the Outer Islands, the
Scottish version of Cailleach, as recorded in folk tales, is nearer Gruagach has now degenerated into a mischievous sprite, but
to the Indian Kali than the more sophisticated version found in this was not always the case; any more than Cailleach was always
the old Irish literature. Both the Indian and Scotlisfi goddesses a term for any old woman. Anyone who has seen the Cailleach's
have black or blue-black faces and a monstrous eye in the middle breasts, two great hills on either side of Broadford in Skye, can
of their foreheads. Kali has three eyes. In the Irish tale the hardly be mistaken on this point.
Cailleach has beautiful eyes. Both are killers of men and portray Black Annis was presumably the same as the Brigid whose
the Great Mother in her old aspect. The Scottish Cailleach, in people were the Brigantes. If this is correct, the Tuatha d6
fact, keeps the youthful version of the goddess imprisoned in a Danann, who were the people of the goddess Danu in Ireland,
cave on Ben Nevis, from whence she is rescued by Diarmid, the were of the same stock as the Brigantes. It is fashionable to
youthful sun god, the Scottish equivalent of Mabon. The English speak of the Danann as consisting only of gods; but I am sure
version of the Cailleach is Black Annis, who is also provided this is a mistake. They were a real people with a number of gods
with the monstrous eye, is of a dark, unpleasant colour and mur- of whom Danu was the original. Like the witches in the Vangelo,
ders men by dropping on them from a tree in the Dane Hills in Danu or Diana had made them skilled magicians and the tales
Leicestershire. Black Annis is thus another Kali and her name, corurected with their magic have in the course of years trans-
preserved as Annis, or Dane, is clearly the Danu, or Annu, of formed them all into gods. Precisely the same fate overtook the
Ireland. Black Annis is still known in Yorkshire, where her Fomori. This unknown people were once human beings, who
96 97
fought and traded in Scotland and lreland. Today'Fomor'is the identified in Britain and lreland. The Sheila-na-gigs are quite
Gaelic word for a giant and they have several rows of teeth. common; but others sometimes masquerade as saints. Professor
Story-telling was the great evening entertainment of the Celt Ian Richmond identified two heads of Mabon from the Brigan-
and it is not surprising that continual embroidery of tales should tian country south of the Roman Wall, which are published in
have effected this transformation. Although the tales are made Darh Ages Britain, edited by J.B. Harden (Fig. ts (a)). These
more attractive thereby, and some of the Irish tales like that of heads have hollows on the top for receiving offerings. A more
the Children of Lir are as beautiful as any in the world, it does spectacular group still exists on the site of an ancient chapel at
not make it easy for anyone to sort them out and discover their White Island, Upper Lough Erne in Ireland (two are shown on
original composition. Fig. ts). I have been involved in a minor controversy over these,
Quite a number of images of the old gods are now being for I could not bear to see them being described as St. Patrick
and other holy men, when one of them was a lady wearing
nothing but a lewd grin and a scanty cloak (FiS. t3 (d)). Five
figures still are on view and it is thought that another lies buried
near by. These figures,like Professor Richmond's Mabons, have
hollows in their heads. The Rev. E. A. Armstrong, the learned
author of Tlu Folhlore of Birds, has picked on one of the figures
as being a deity known over much of the ancient world and
usually shown with a pair of birds, perhaps we should call them
a brace, in his hands. Unfortunately the name of this god is not
known and it is difficult to equate him with any definite god of
the Celtic world. Perhaps he is a kind of Pan; but we do not
know enough to say anything definite. Here already, however,
we have some unlikely companions for St. Patrick. One appears
to be a Mother Goddess; the other a lord of nature. A third
figure is plainly a warrior of some kind. It may be that he is the
same god as that shown on the Devil's Stone at Copgrove
(F.ig. + (u)); but he has no horns and is not left-handed. This
c. e. Celtic Mars could be either Teutates or Taramis if he had been
Fig. 13. Celtic gods from the British Isles. found on the Continent. Here in lreland, it is possible that he is a
(a) Stone 'herm' from Corbridge identified as Mabon (after Ian kind of Hero-god, perhaps Cuchulain. The carving clearly in-
Richmond). tends him to be young. The remaining two figures are meant to
(b) Similar figure from White Island, Upper Loch Erne. be older deities. The one apparently stroking his chin, wearing a
(c) Irish bronze and enamelled figure of Mabon. Viking loot (after sword and having a helmet on his head, must be surely a king of
H. Shetelig). the gods (F.ig. ts (b)). He may be Nuada, holding up his silver
(d) Stone figure of Mother Goddess from White Island. hand, or Lugh himself. Lastly there is one with the open scroll
(e) Bronze and enamelled Irish figure. Viking loot from the Oseberg on his knees. Is this a figure of Ogmius, who introduced writing?
shipburial (Shetelig). If it were so, one might have expected him to be holding some-
Note Indian lotus, or yogi, position of d and e. Another figure from
White Island has been identified by E. A. Armstrong as 'The thing more like a tally stick on which oghams would be cut.
Master of Animals'. A fourth is probably Ogmius This unique group shows at once the difficulty confronting any-
one who tries to solve these problems. Opinions on what they
98
99
represent differ so widely that they have been known both as the breasts are clearly defined. These certainly suggest representa-
Seven Deadly Sins and St. Patrick and his converts. 'We cannot, tions of the Great Mother. The reason for this is not hard to see.
howeverr get away from the figure with the birds, and the woman The buckets and pans were intended for foodstuffs, which might
is not an unknown type. The date of the group is as uncertain as go bad. Figures of the Great Mother and other gods were put on
their names; but they are not earlier than the Roman period and the vessels as protective charms to preserve their contents.
probably not later than the eighth century. The kind of scabbard- The placing of charms on vessels used for storage of food,
end hanging below the war god's shield was common from late especially milk, is very widespread and is also of very great age.
Roman times on into the seventh century. The penannular We could probably find cases of their employment today in
brooch that he wears could be as early as the first century, but every country of western Europe. Often they are simply drawn
continued in use for many centuries. It is perhaps more likely to with the finger; but at times they became a kind of rash found on
be somewhere about the fifth centur5r than either the first or the all pottery. Since the employment of any magic was pagan in
ninth. There is one other way of making an approximation and it character, there were ages when none could be employed openly.
leads to matters of considerable interest. At others, when the rule of the Church was weakened, they
The cross-legged goddess is also found on an Irish bucket appeared once more and it is interesting to see that when they
#
found in a Norwegian ship-burial ( Fig. t s (e)). This bucket must did so, they were not new ideas, but ones of great antiquity. In
have come from Ireland, either as trade or loot, before the Roman times the face of a goddess, unidentifiable, but probably
beginning of the ninth centuryr for it came from the burial of a the same Great Mother, is often found on jugs. I have found
Norwegian queen, who is confidently assumed to be Aasa who specimens myself. But on other vessels there is often a male face,
died in about a.n. 8oo. [t was an old Celtic custom to put figures which one sees described in serious reports as a 'rustic deity'.
at the:junction of the handle and the bucket and in Ireland it These things almost vanish with the termination of Roman rule;
reached a high standard of workmanship. The seated figures on although the Germans often made breasts on their pots, both on
this Oseberg-ship bucket have cloaks covered with elaborate the Continent and in England. These might not be recognized as
patterns in millefiori glass. Like the lady from Lough Erne, they such, if specimens were not sometimes found with the human
wear nothing else. The resemblance might seem to be accidental, face as well. With the coming of Christianity, all this fades from
had not other Irish vessels been found in Viking graves, with sight and remains underground for a very long time. It had not
figures which appear to represent different Celtic gods. One gone. People still carried out old rituals whether it was seeing
from Myklebostad is thought to have been buried in the ninth the summer in with a certain amount of licence on May Eve, or
century. On it are three standing male figures, again with putting out the offering of a bowl of milk for the goddess, paint-
millefiori glass on their tunics, whose faces are made in the same ing her eyes on the bows of a boat, or leaving fish behind for her
style and by no means unlike that of the king at Lough Erne to eat when the fishermen went home. There was plenty of
(FiS. tS (c)). There are also two separate examples of ornaments ritual, but little visible evidence for its existence. Archaeology
showing pairs of confronted human heads which apparently are by itself could never have even hinted that, deep down in the
attempts to display on a flat surface a double-headed, Janus-like minds of the people, the old gods were not forgotten. Great
god, who is found both in Gaul and Ireland. numbers of beautiful churches were raised to the glory of God as
In case it is thought that I am making too much of trivial Christianity saw it and yet here and there as time went on faces
objects, there is yet another bucket of Irish origin, which was began to peer from corbel or roof boss which were not Chris-
found at Hexham in Northumberland close to the wall of the tian at all. As dogma increased and became more rigid, so did
church. It contained more than eight thousand coins, thought to evidence of hostility to it become more plain. This is bound to
have been hidden about a.p. 867. The handles of this bucket have happen in any virile race, in which the individual resents being
female figures supporting them, of which only the faces and dragooned into uniformit[, and no one is more set on uniformity
loo rot
than the religious bigot, who has convinced himself that God has paganism in their churches. Once rebellion raised its head, stub
told him in confidence what pleases Him. So, as the Church of bonr individualists in England, Germany and the Low Countries
Rome became more apparently omnipotent, in the same degree drank once more to the great lord of Rature, in mugs which
more and more men decided that it was a nuisance and a bore. As were protected by his face from any papist slipping some arsenic
translations of Holy Writ appeared in print, after centuries of
concealment in a language which ordinary men did not under-
stand, more and more people began to think that Holy Church
did not always have the right explanation of what God wanted
at all. They had been hoodwinked by a caste of professional go-
betweens. Trouble was bound to come and long years of brutal
civil wars and wars between nations resulted from it.
The Council of Trent in a.p. t5q54g had inveighed against
many of the symbols of re-emerging paganism which the
churchmen thought they could observe, and some of these are the
very things which have caught the eye of students of church
architecture. The Council, for instance, denounced the represen-
tation of the Trinity as a single head formed with two eyes to do
duty for six, three noses and three mouths (FiS. t4 (q)). Now
this was the exact manner in which the great Gaulish Trinity,
Taranis, Teutates and Esus, had been represented fourteen hun-
dred years before (F.ig. l4 ( t) and (s)). When the Protestants
began to fight for their beliefs, the Rhineland potteries of the t(

mid-sixteenth century began to place elaborately moulded ver-

sions of this face on their stoneware mugs. They also produced
:G,
q.\-) tl
innumerable jugs and bottles on which a single face appeared, I
fierce and arrogant. These are the jrgr usually spoken
of as 'Bellarmines' ; but the bearded face is not that of the Fig. r+. Return"of the old gods.
scholarly cardinal, neither is it that of the Duke of Alva as some ' ( l) Triple head of Taranis, Teutates and Esus on a
supposed. Another set of mugs gives the clue. They are decorated Roman pot from Gaul, c. first century a.o.
with scrolls of oak leaves and acorns. In fact the oak tree, or (e) Triple head on Rhenish stoneware pot of mid-six-
something to do with it, is still found on the German beer mugs teenth centurY a.o.
of today. But why should the oak appear on a mug for drinking (g) Triple head carved on a Romano-Gaulish altar
beerl Surely hops would be more appropriate? The answer is from Soissons (after O. Brogan).
(+) Triple head carved in stone from Corleck, Cavan,
found far back in time. The trinity face is not that of the Chris-
Ireland (after T. E. G. Powell). Presumably Celtic
tian Trinity; it is the face of Teutates, Taranis and Esus. The pre-Christian Iron Ag".
single head is Esus. He, like Zeus, who probably is no more
than a variant of the name, was the god in the oak tree. He is the into the good ale. Thousands upon thousands of these stoneware
same rustic deity who appeared on the pots of the Romano- jrgr, mugs and bottles were shipped into England and they are
Britons and who gazes through the oak leaves in the roof of a most common in London and the Protestant east. Elizabeth I
village church. The Councillors of Trent were right. There was even had them specially made for her household with her cypher
toz lo9
upon them. It would be interesting to know whether she was
aware whose face was on them. It was the kind ofjoke which she
would have appreciated. Most men probably took the face to be
that of one of their enemies; but many must have known better
and, like the Jacobites who succeeded them, drank to the king
over the water, not, one suspects, without plenty of gin in it.
Now this Esus must surely be Diana's nature god lover. In
several places in England, including Glastonbury, great pairs of Chapter Eight
oak trees were known as Gog and Magog. Esus is Gog. Magog
does not come so well out of the darkness of the Middle Ages.
Long centuries of rule by men had lowered her to second place.
The lover was remembered, while the Queen of Heaven was to a ,T,HE Celtic Artemis, so we are told, was ruler of all wild
great extent forgotten. I animals. Before he could kill any of them, the hunter had to
The Queen of the May, however, remained at least as long as make her an offering. Even a hare, to Roman surprise, had to be
the Jack in the Green. It is the phase of the moon which is indemnified in this way. From what we know and what Roman
observed when vegetables are planted and when peats are cut. It writers do not seem to have known, the hare, as an attribute of
then is Macha who sees to this. It is the new moon's face which the moon, must have needed aparticularly expensive redemption.
you must not see reversed in a glass and the moon's horseshoe Be this as it rlxl, the Celtic Artemis was ruler of them all and
that is hung up for luck. Above all you must not see the new the classical Diana was Lady of any beast which had part of its
moon through a tree, especially the first new moon of the year. anatomy shaped like a sickle moon. Anything with two horns
For she is Black Annis and, if you saw here there, she would was hers, boars, with their pair of curving tushes, hers, and the
drop on you and strangle you. You must not let her shine on horse, with its moon-shaped hooves, particularly hers. But
you while you sleep, or you would become mad, because you others were hers also, cats for instance and some of the birds.
cannot then rise and do obeisance. Nine times you must bow to We may say that there was little difference in this respect
the new moon; once for each of Brigid's maidens. Then you between the two versions of the Great Mother. Isis joined in
turn your money in your pocket to magic Diana into doubling it. with the fishes of the sea.
After all the years that have passed, the moon still has many One of the things one is compelled to notice when looking at
more superstitious customs relating to her than to the sun. the names of the Celtic tribes, whether the ancient ones of Gaul
Lucifer and Beelzebub have not conquered her. and Britain, or the more modern clans of Scotland, is that some
of them are called after animals and others after the various
names of the Great Goddess. There are for instance the Chatti,
the cats of the Rhineland, and the Boii, the oxen, of Caesar's
'War, the Iceni and Epidii, the
day; the Cattubellauni, the Cats of
horse people; the Vacomagi, perhaps Macha's cows or the
peoples of the cow plain; the Damnonii, the people of the stag,
and the men of the Orcades, the pig islands of the time of Tacitus
and Ptolemy. The Brigantes are the people of Brigid and the
Tuatha dd Danann those of Danu; while the Caledonii belonged
to the Cailleach. There are probably others, but these are the
most obvious. All these tribes were presumably named after the
l04 l05
Celtic Artemis herself, or her attributes. They must belong to but of the ancient animal peoples, the Boars, the Stags, the Cats
the days before Father gods became most important. and the Bulls still remain and flourish today. If we knew of a
Today there is still clan Chattan, the cat clan, to which the Wolf tribe in the ancient past we could name its descendants.
MacPhersons, MacKintoshes, MacGillivrays, MacQueens, Mac- The Cats are not a tribe mentioned in Scotland by Ptolemy; but
Beans, Keiths, Shaws, Farquharsons and Davidsons belong. Of he has branches of them in Essex and near the Rhine. Caithness
these clans, portions of what was evidently a great tribe in older is named after them. Possibly they were in process of moving up
days, the arms borne by the chiefs of MacPherson, MacKintosh, to the far north, after the defeat of Boadicea's warriors, when
MacGilliway and MacBean are a cat of some kind; Shaw and Ptolemy's geographical information was collected. Several
Farquharson have a lion, which is much the same thing, Keith ancient families in Ireland also bear boars, horses, stags and bulls
and Davidson a stag's head and MacQueen the head of a wolf. on their arms. The O'Malley has both horse and boar.
Four then, or six if you can count the lions, still show openly, for This business of the goddess's beasts can be approached from
the world to see, that they are Cattubellauni, cats of war. While several angles. First, I think, it is safe to assume that tribes
of the other three, who we may perhaps assume to have been bearing names which relate them to the Great Mother were
detached portions of different tribes, two show the stag of the settled in Britain before the Belgic immigration. They were
Damnonii and one the wolf's head of some unknown tribe. matriarchal tribes, even if some of them were in process of
If this is any sort of guide, ild correspondence with the changing over to the other system when the Romans came. The
Unicorn Herald tells me that he has similar ideas, then clans bulk, if not the whole, of the Pictish nation would have consisted
descended from the ancient Damnonii should include some of the matriarchal tribes. If we are to look for traces of their
Gordons, MacKenzies, Frasers, Keiths, Colquhouns and David- veneration of the Great Mother, then the place to look for them
sons, although many of these are spoken of with some contempt is near the centre of Pictish rule. As it happens there seem to
today as being of Anglo-Norman or Norse origin. The Suther- have been two or more such centres. Scone, not far from Perth,
lands with a cat should once have belonged to Clan Chattan. The was one, and the Inverness district was another at the time of
boar's head, of what we may think were once the men of Orkney, St. Columba. These districts are famed for an unexplained class
the people of the boar, is that of Maclver, most Campbells, Mac- of antiquities, the Pictish Stones, which I dealt with to some
Kinnons, MacAlpines and some Gordons. It is not strange to find extent in Gogmagog. These stones are mostly flat slabs or stand-
the boar's head on the arms of Malcolmson. They are a sept of ing stone pillars and are probably funerary monuments. The
the Macleods of Raasay, who came from Lewis in late medieval most striking thing about them are symbols which seem to be
times. The sea corurection with orkney is easy. Most unexpected, )moon and sun emblems and pictures of animals. The more
however, is the black bull's head of the Macleods of Harris, for elaborate ones, however, are grouped round a cross. It seems
this is the only clan to still carry what we may assume to have reasonable to suppose that those with animals and symbols alone
been the ancient sign of the Vaccomagi, who were in eastern are purely pagan, while those combining the cross are evidence
Scotland in the days of Ptolemy. There are not many other clans of dualistic beliefs. Examples exist in which the cross has been
whose arms suggest that they were once people of the Great added later to an earlier carving. The most frequent animals to
Mother, the Cailleach of the Caledonii. be found, on what we may think to be pagan carvings, are stags,
The whole idea may be incorrect, but it does suggest a line horses, bulls, boars, dogs and serpents. The eagle is not in-
o_pen to investigation. It hints at tribal movements quite un- frequent. I have not noticed a cat. The bulls appear to be most
thoughtof today and of the breaking up and reshuffiing of ancient common in Aberdeenshire, but the others do not seem to have a
units. There is now no chief of the MacEachems. The tribe has local range.
apparently been overrun and absorbed by MacDonalds of lrish All these beasts belonged to the Cailleach of course. Pre-
origin, as one would have expected from the history of Argyll; sumably all animals did, but there are ones which are known to
l06 : lO7
have that association. Now if we return to our clans again we We can separate out various waves of immigration by
find one, Morrison ( Mhic Gille-Morie), which has the serpent archaeological study; but though these may give a clear-cut pic-
as its crest. These Morrisons of Lewis speak of themselves as ture of successions of types of pots and tools, th"y give no true
being descended from a shipwrecked Norseman and are regard-ed picture of the character of the people. A Brown Bess musket, a
,r , ?iking clan; but the celebrated Captain'Thomas, R.N., who Lee Metford rifle and a Bren machine-gun were all used by
preserved"much information about the West Coast, held a different generations of Englishmen; but they were also used by
different view. In his view the Morrisons, Sons of the Sea, different generations of Negroes. Furthermore it is only the
together with the Morgans of Wales and MacNamaras of lre- doings of the leading families in any tribe which become pre-
l";d, were all septs, or branches, of an old Siol Morganaich and served in history; the origin of their tribesmen may be much the
were Lochlann"ih. Th" Lochlannach are usually spoken of as same as their own, or it can be entirely different. It is the name
Vikings, but the name was in use long before the Vikings came of the leaders by which the tribe was known at a particular time.
on thJ scene. Lugh, Nuada and the rest of the D6 Danann gods With a change of leaders the tribal name may become comPletely
all came from Lochlinn. There is no reason therefore for assum- altered. Therefore the arms of clan chieftains may be quite as
ing a Viking origin for this clan; it is just as likely to have be3n good a guide to the origins of that clan as the recorded genealo-
Piitish. guiwheie was Lochlinni If it was Norway as is generally gies of the chieftains themselves. People speak of Frasers and
assumed, then we should expect to find traces of the old religion Gordons as being of Anglo-Norman origin. This may be true of
there. In the old Norse liteiature, traces are very scanty, but in their chiefs and still not true of the clansmen. The stag's head on
the far older rock pictures of Norway and Sweden there is the crest suggests that these were once a branch of the Damnonii,
much evidence whiih might be interpreted in this way. It is, while the boar's head borne by some Gordons suggests an
however, so old that, if this is a true link, it goes back in time to origin, or at least a period of residence, in the Orkneys. Further-
our supposed proto-Celtic wave. Then the famous treasures, the more suggestions have been made that both clans originated as
sword-of Nuada, the never empty cauldron of Dagda and even the Gaulish tribes of Gorduni and Frisii, the Gordon ivy-leaf
the Coronation Stone, the Lia Fail itself, came to the British Isles badge being quoted as the badge of the Gorduni. I do not know
some l,5OO years before the birth of Christ. I find this too where this story of the Gorduni having such a badge is to be
difficult to swallow. Dagda and Macha may well be of this agg; found, but I see nothing improbable in the Frasers being once
but Lugh, Nuada and t[e more sophisticated gods must surely Frisii. Not only were Frisians great sailors on the North Sea,
belonglo the Iron Ag", when the sling came- into use in war in but there is a suggestion in late Roman times that the Firth of
) Forth was sometimes known as the Frisian Gulf, or Sea. It is by
this c6untry. The .rii.r." of the excavated hill forts, in which
the defenc", *".. considerably widened to suit the use of this no means improbable that from very early times Frisians had
weapon, appears to be quite definite. These glds did not arrive been settling on the east coast of Scotland. The old name of the
till iate in ifre lron Age, perhaps 2oo s.c. Nuada put out the Frasers was Frizell and their Gaelic name Frisealaich. Many
older sun god, Balor's, eye with a sling-shot. today are called Simpson, after Simon Fraser their former chief.
The did'culty is that so many waves of settlers came into these I think that quite a lot might be learnt by students of heraldry,
islands and eaih time this happened they married some of the if they took this matt"r ,rp on a continental scale. Articles are
women oi the older races. These women passed some of their starting to appear which show that the possibilities are begin-
beliefs on to their children and the children learnt other beliefs ning to appeal to more people than the Unicorn Herald. Not
from the new tribe into which they were born. No religion was only animals on early coats, but suns and moons may suggest
ever static, except in areas where no new blood was ever in- associations with the old religious beliefs. No less than three
troduced. The p.i.st. may have kept what they believed was the septs originating in heraldic times from the Outer Islands have
pure version of their faith. The congregation never did. charges which carry this suggestion: the Macleods of Harris
t08 l09
with their bull, the Macleods of Raasay with sun in splendour lowly things iike domestic pots, ail over the west people liked to
and the Malcolmsons with a boar. It looks as if the mixture of place protective charrns and these took the form of symbols
pagan Vikings with the Celts of the islands were more ready than relating to the old gods. It is not confined to any one age; there
most to take former religious emblems on their arms. In any are drawings of stags and lunar symbols stamped on the pottery
case the arms of the north are in this respect more interesting of Iron Age tribes in the Outer Hebrides in the days of Roman
than those of England. Why, for instance, has Morison of Bog- rule in Britain, and there are horses of an earlier date drawn on
nie in Aberdeenshire a three-faced Saracen's head on his shield? the Celticpots of Gaul. The whole thing is continuous over many
This looks remarkably like the triple-faced head which repre- centuries. In Christian lreland, gods and goddesses appear on
sents Taranis, Teutates and Esus in pagan Gaul. metal vessels. Even in medieval England such things seem to
This is much too big a subject for me to tackle and only one occur. Only recently when cleaning some whitewash offa stone,
facet of the study of the Mother Goddess's beasts. These beasts which apparently came from the splay of a fourteenth-century
are our real quest at the moment, for they are the guise in which window of a domestic chapel here at Hole, I found a stag
'the Devil' ippeared to his devotees, as is shown clearly in the scratched with care on the smooth surface. It showed no sign of
witch trials. He appeared as a horse, a black dog and so on. weathering and the draughtsman may well have known that it
There is no mention of this in the accounts of the modern witch would be concealed at once. Some strange things are being
rites and we have no idea whether it still happens anywhere in learnt from the study of such graffiti in churches, but t will leave
the country. It is, however, worth remarking that it was them to Mrs. V. Pritchard, who has made them her special study
specially pievalent in the east of Scotland, where the Pictish and, I believe, is bringing them out in book form. I do not think,
rtor.r *itfr beasts on them are most numerous today. There however, I should be speaking out of turn in saying that some
must be a connection between the two. The most obvious one graffiti seem to show priests dressing up in animal masks.
surely is that the Devil was representing one of the Great To return, however, to this stag from Hole. This is not the
Mother's animals; just as the Maiden of the coven today work of some naughty child, or unskilled draughtsman. The curves
represents the goddess herself. The Queen of the May !n the are cut with skill and precision and the drawing is the work of
bad old days, if they were any worse than the present, clearly somebody who had had a lot of practice. You carurot walk up to a
did the same. The Queen was the most important character, the slab of stone on a wall, pull a knife out of your pocket and pro-
'devil' a necessary but less important personage. It was one duce something of this kind by the light of nature. This is a
stage higher up the hierarchy than the single witch and her minor work of art and was put there for a purpose. What that
familiar. At the top of the ladder was Diana herself and her lover, purpose was we can only guess. It is clearly not a part of some
Pan. Perhaps there were other covens in which the 'devil' did vanished scheme of decoration. The stone on which it is drawn is
not represent the Pan lover at all, but was a Lucifer or Beelze- 17 inches long and t t inches wide and nothing else is cut on it,
bub. Or perhaps there were yet others in which he stood in place although on another fragment of the stone there is a dog. I can-
of the Lord of the Underworld. This aPpears to be the set-up in not help thinking that, like the tiles with dogs and hares, suns
some modern covens; but there is no means of telling whether and moons, it had a deeper significance and was one of the god-
the same conditions prevail in all of them. It would be interesting dess's beasts. It is, of course, stretching a point much further
to know. than the evidence will allow, but Devon is a land of the Dum-
The pottery of the pagan Saxons in England, as I tried to nonii. The various versions of Ptolemy sometimes give Dam-
show il Gogmagog, exhibits the same tendency to employ nonii and sometimes Dumnonii and the Scottish branch is pre-
animal formJas fu i"en on the rather later Pictish stones, while sumably an offshoot driven north by the Belgic invasion. If the
stamps representing the sun and moon are very common. I need Scottish branch were, as I think, the people of the Stag, then the
not go inio this agiin here. It seems to show, however, that on Devon one was probably the same, for 'Dumnos' the 'world'
llo lll
 side, as in the case of King Redwald of East Anglia, who had a
seems to make little sense. Is it altogether too wild a guess to
Christian altar at one end of his church and one to pagan deities
suggest that this stag from.Hole is the same st!g- Yli.l occurs
at the other. The Benty Grange helmet may be of seventh-
fr""ri time to time orilto, Age pottery in the Hebrides? I have
century date.
often seen wilder guesses than this in serious works on archaeo-
Wecan see the boar then being figured as an attribute of the
logy. Actual figurIs of stag_s ty* up incurious places in-Britain
Great Mother from perhaps 2oO s.c. right through to the boars
not rare in Roman Gaul. A small bronze casting, looking
"rt- "re on the Pictish stones and to the heraldic devices of Highland
like a votive object, turned up in the early Christian settlement
chiefs today. Whether it is extinct in English folk-lore, I do
of Gateholm in-Pembrokeshire. In this settlement Major H. E.
not know. But I have never heard tales of it myself.
David and I found evidence for phallic worship in the main build-
ing. A fine silver stag was found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial on
I do not know for certain whether the cat was a domestic
animal in Roman Britain; although I seem to remember having
wfrat I take to be ,i iror, spear rack, but which is thought by
seen cats' footprints on a Romano-British roof tile in some
others to have been a standaid for use in battle. This is figured in
museum. The earliest written mention appears to be in a Welsh
the British Museum's Guide to Sutton Hoo'
law.l In this law anyone who killed a royal eat was compelled to
One of the favourite beasts of the Mother Goddess in Britain
pay a fine of so muCh corn as would cover a cat completety yI"."
was the boar, or shall we say pig, for both sow and boar figur9 in
old stories. It was the Caitlu"ih r boar which caused the death of
it *ut held up by the tail with its nose touching the floor. This
does not sound much of a fine, but, judging by the way grain
Diarmid, the young sun god; pointing I thlnk to a supposed
runs out of a hopper, I should think it worked out at about a ton.
victory of the ota *ittiarchal gods of Scotland over the younger
The cats, however, of the Cattubellauni and Clan Chattan
patriaichal gods from lreland. In Ireland we see the reverse of
were, of course, wild cats, a very different proposition from the
ihis pictrrelwhen Nuada, one of the newer gods, puts out the
smug beast curled up in front of my fire.,'Touch not the cat bot a
of Balor, a god of an older hierarchy._l! yut a sow who used
"y. glovi,' runs the famous motto of MacPherson, MacKintosh and
ti chase yourg"p.ople down the hilts of Wales and gave rise to MacBean; I should hate to touch the only wild cat I have seen in
the saying, 'Th. Dlvit take the hindmost'. Boars are not rare in
its natural state, even with the thickest hedging glove. I have
Iron Age-urt. Bronze statuettes are found and one was drawn on
always been told that they were utterly impossible to domesti-
the celEbrated Witham shield. They are found as considerable
cate; although somebody has probably succeeded in this un-
stone carvings in the Celtic art of Gaul, a gogg one being shgwn
necessary pursuit by now. Of all the Cailleach's forest creatures,
in T. PowelIs The Celts. I believe that one of these pigs, made of )the wild iat gives the best rePresentation of her murderous
black 'foreign' stone, was found on the island of Barra not so
ferocity.
long ago. It"s discovery, ild the attempt !9 take a piece broken
I do not know any early pictures of wild cats and by the time
off?t io Ctutgow for-examination, is said to have raised such
they do appear in Irish art, well on in Christian days,- they wefe
terrible gales"that it was hastily reburied where it had been
proUrUty dbmestic beasts. 'I and Padur ban, my cat,' wrote the
found. Fi"gures of pigs are relatively 9oP*ol in pagan A"glo-
old Irish scribe, "tis a like task we are at.'
Saxon ornament and-I figured some of them in Gogmagog. P2r-
The ram may be most important as a pointer towards the area
haps the most remarkable of all, however, was found on the
in which the dlvetoped Mother Goddess religion originated. I
remains of a helmet at Benty Grange, Northumberland, for here
am thinking of Colchis and the Golden Fleece. The ram is com-
was a boar on the crest of tlie helmet and a small silver Christian
mon in Celtic art in Gaul and its head is often used on the ends
cross, not an equal-armed sun symbol, on the front of it. We
need to note these pieces of evidence for dualism when we meet
of bracelets and suchlike ornaments. I have even found a
them, for they point to two religious charms-being considered
specimen * *[:j
necessary for a single persorr. The two beliefs existed side by
:n:# *,']:.:':J;;::,:"ttuberlaunian
tt2 ll3
chieftain in England. The ram, however, is more closely asso- patriarchy and matriarchy and compares with the story of
ciated with the male god than with the Great Mother; although Diarmaid and the Cailleach's boar. In this case Cernunnos has
I do not think that this is a very great matter, for with the change- the Cailleach's serpent by the throat and her lunar symbol in his
over to the greater importance of the father, many of the hand. He is represented as taking over her functions and her
mother's attributes became linked with him. We find the ram animals as well. When the ram-headed serpent appears in later
then associated with variants of the sun god; everybody must Gaulish art, it is associated with male deities, but in Scotland it
have heard of Jupiter Ammon in Egypt. Like the goat, another remained the property of the Cailleach. The change in the sex of
of the Cailleach's beasts, which is just another sheep, he is looked the gods reached Gaul before Britain. But though the represen-
upon now as somewhat indecent and deeply linked with the tations of the gods in Gaul in the Roman period show that this
popular idea of devils and witches. In olden times, however, he had taken place to a very wide extent, yet after Roman rule col-
had not fallen to this lowly estate and to this day remains as the lapsed it was Diana who survived longer than any other. I use
symbol of Mars. There were no ram or goat clans in the the name Diana in its widest sense, for the Breton blessing of the
British Isles, or if there were such tribes, no mention has sur- fleets of teraneuvas which set out to fish on the Grand Banks
vived. For some reason, however, which is not understood, the of Newfoundland today, is almost detail for detail the blessing of
ram's head became attached to the body of the serpent. Not only the Mediterranean fleets at the beginning of the sailing season,
is the serpent found quite often on the Pictish stones, but it is as is described by Apuleius in Tlu Golden Ass. This was in
also one of the Cailleach's beasts and is frequent on Anglo- honour of Isis. We will, however, deal with the Isis question
Saxon potterl, as I have mentioned already. The serpent is the later on.
crest of the Morrisons of Lewis. Horses were of great importance to the Celtic world; on
Although the adder is venomous, its bite is seldom fatal to account of their moon-shaped hooves they were Diana's. It was
man and it is not very often seen. It is, however, a sinister beast with war chariots and wagons that they fought their way across
and well suited to the Cailleach when she was a destroyer. Kali, Europe. Long before the Transvaal Boers, the Celts made use of
her Indian counterpart, has a girdle of snakes. The adder always the wagon laager to defend their moving camp. It was with
appears when you least expect it. You nearly put your hand on it chariots that the Aryans appeared on the plains of India. Some-
on a bank, or sit on a wall and see it peering at you with darting where on the Steppes of Asia, the chariot of war must have been
tongue. My wife has a great dislike of them. Once when crossing evolved from a primitive cart with solid wheels. Who made this
d+ bog in Mull, near to where the sinister black shape of the revolutionary discovery of a rapidly moving platform for use in
"Cailleacli's Head juts into the Western Ocean towards Coll, she war is not known, but this, together with the invention of the
remarked, 'I don't like this place. I am sure there are adders sea-going ship, changed the face of the world. Its weakness was
here.' I replied that I had tramped innumerable miles in Mull that it was too wide and the horses were too far in front of the
without once seeing the infamous MuIl adder. As I said this, I driver for a real cavalry charge to be made against well-trained
looked down to see one curled up on a tussock of grass at my infantry armed with missile weapons. It was useless against
feet. That is the way of it. But there are no adders in the Outer Roman legionaries; although, as Caesar tells us, when they first
Islands. The Morisons got their serpent elsewhere. met it in Britain they were alarmed by the whirring wheels and
On the celebrated Gunderstrup bowl in Copenhagen, a great the gymnastics of the warriors running out along the poles and
silver cauldron probably made by Celts in Central Europe and slashing with their great swords. The chariot was slowly
frequently figured, Cernunnos is shown with antlered head and pushed north by newer methods of warfare and the use of
lunir torque, holding a ram-headed serpent in his hand. I cavalry, until we hear the last of it used against Agricola in
showed a drawing of this in Gogmagog. It seems probable that Angus. In lreland it survived for much longer and the bards told
this is another example of the struggle for supremacy between remarkable tales of heroes jumping their chariot teams over
I 1,1 ll5
 loyalty and heroism even if it was a long time_ago. Should the
fallen logs and similar evolutions. These tales, faithfull-y study of antiquity be robbed of these, it would not be worth
*ritt.., d6wn by Christian monks about their ancestors, can still at a[1. Iithere had been no Flodd€r, 'The Flowers of
be read by us ioday. Chariots, as a means of rapid
transport, "rryti,irrg
presumably the the ForIst', one of the most beautiful laments, would never have
remained in use in the Middle Ages and were
children' been written.
dog<a.tsltt which we drove as
-In
".,..rto.,
of the gigs and If you look at history as if it were a huge piece_of woven
Gaul, the Eo?se goddEss, Epona, which is simply Gaulish mut.ii"l, you can pick out strands running through the pattern
for mare and not heisecret name, was venerated by Roman in both diiections. If you had all these strands in your han{, some
."rr"t.yregimentsandacceptedinRomeitself'Aslhavesaid made of metal insteid of wool, you could reconstitute the pat-
a male human
before, Ep6na's mother was-a mare and her father tern from a fragment by the bends in the metal ones. This has
ng"i"'trig. 2 (")). Thig-survival of totemistic marriage- has
been done with gold strips fallen from a vanished brocade. If we
,fi."ay beZn discussed. All these animal companions of godand
can get enough strips and not just follow a single one' we will be
o
goddess were once totems. ablJto do t[-e same. History, archaeology, folk-lore, heraldly,
A, this point it struck me that it would be interesting to have anthropology and many more threads are in our hands, but the
look at the arms of the Duke of Norfolk, the creation of
whose
a threads are-broken in many places. If we spread out, studY, and
dukedom dates from 1489. It was no surprise, after wJrat
juggle these threads, patches of pattern begin to form. It is up
has already come out of the heraldic side of the storlr to. find
with a sprig of oak in-its to *yorre to say *" li"rr" got it wrong;, but not to question the
that one of his crests was a silver horse
that possiLility of su"cess. Without the _many strands, there is not
mouth. It is pleasing, even if it should be but a coincidence, ihe slighiest hope of getting more than a single pretty piece.of
if," p.". in thJiand of the lceni, the horse p.9pl.,- should metal i"itf, u, i.r"gu1ar series of ups and downs on it. The
"fri.f
combine on one of his helms the horse of the Great
Mother and
things-can be difficulty today is to find enough people to take a number of
the oak of Esus, or Pan. I do not think that these
strips in their-hands and try to make out a pattern from them.
.oirr"ia"rr.es, there are too many of them' f\"V- are clues .to Faf too many are tied to a single strip and measuring with the
,"*p, of ancierrt history, waitin[ -fot-Yt to pick them out' All
been noted greatest accuracy its ups and downs and the exact composition
,fr.o'ugt, their remarkabie history_the Howards have 6f tf," metal. For this- reason I pick up every strip I can lay
for thlir adherence to old.rrt.t. Is it surprising that their arms
years hands on, including an unorthodox but most useful one called
similar tendencynearly five hundred $:?
should indicate a Inherent Probability. Some may not belong to the same piece of
The Howards were Yorkist and it wal to the gold *g"l -of *" aloth and will ,.r.t fit at all. Others will be broken in vital
forkist king, Edward IV, that the sun fYmbol was added beside places. But when you find several which do fit so that a recog-
the head of ilrlich"el, or Lugh. The symbol was not on
the earlier
the rest of the nizable pattern begins to emerge, then you can be pretty sure
,"g.f of the l,u*rtitian kilg,-H9nry YIt"l*3ugh that the pattern iJ right, for it would not fit together in^any
design was much the same.-'Jackie-of Norfolk be not too
bold,'
of Norfolk's other *uy. Our heraldic strand fits into the inequalities of the
read the alarming doggerel flung inlo th-e Duke
historical, archaeological, anthropological and folk-lore strands.
lent before the ba"ttle Jf-Bo.*orth Field, 'for Diccon thy master This can hardty be ioincidence. But let others try it. Then we
i, Uorght and sold.' Yet Jackie ignored it. and died with his
of loyalty and his son, would begin to learn something.
masteion the field. This was a fine piece
well deserved the victory As usuil I have been diverted from my train of thought. Let
who was taken prisoner at Bosworth,
all in keeping us get back to our horses.
twenty-eight years later.-It is
he won at Flodden if," Celts for many centuries rubbed shoulders with the
*i,r, Kipling's view of the gir-m.tie of Merlin's Island: 'old Scythians of the lands northward of the Black Sea. The Scan-
wars, old pJace, old arts thal cease and thus was England made'' dinavian gods of Aasgard came from there and who today can be
It is all siily sentimentality I suppose, but why must we forget ll7
116
 lgry- cavbs of France, who lived on the horse. If this is so, then the
certain, without hearing him speak, -that a fair-haired,
celt? The origins of Diana and Pan are contemPorary. In fact the origin of
chinned Norseman is nit a fair-haired, long+hinned
from the Scythians, for th-e garb of this side of the witch religion is so old that years do not matter
Celt, borrowed their trews at all.
kilt. They may well have borrowed
old Gaul did not include the of those connected with the Moon Herself,
and perhaps their religion also'. ,
With the exception
- horseScythians
the probably traces of veneration paid to the horse
had methods 6f sacrificing horses which were there are more
Til surviving in Britain today than to any other object. There are so
remarkabiy ,rnpleasing. They threaded the unfortunate
beasts
air. Readers who wish to many superstitions that, although I brought a number of them
t" io"g pot., "na r"irIa them into the
and also of its together in Gogmagog, I shall not attempt to enlarge on them
f."* u"Ufut the extreme antiquity of this practice
here. Everyone must know about wishing when you see a white
survival down to the days or ph"t"graphy in inner Asia,
should
Slyihians and Greepr' The horse and doing so before you think of its tail. They must have
consult the late Sir Etiis Mirrr,r'.- heard of the 'Horseman's oath' and know superstitions about
reason I mention this is because the Irish Great Mother, Badb,
fastened picking up horseshoes. They know about Lady Godiva and the
iruJ" *rgic horse, which was threaded on a chariot Pol", lady riding to Banbury Cross and they have seen the great white
been ghost horse,
;;; pA 3, it, forehead. This must surely have a
According to horse at Uffington, whose very name is more likely to have
,Jrrt'to"her by sacrifice in the Scythian manner.
sacrificed at the funeral originated in a comuption of 'ePos'than in that of the name of
Herodotur, ,n*y men and horses were
some imaginary Saxon farmer. They may not have heard, how-
;i; ftythian t"i.,g, stuffed and pegg.{ ,p round to
his burial
accompany ever, of the Mari Llwyd, the grim horse's skull on a pole, which
mound. hf," whole- group was probably intended
but many is rushed through Welsh houses at Christmastide and seems to
him as a present to tf,eir deity. It is a revolting picture^, carry a faint reflection of the horror of the pole sacrifice.
performed in the name of some mis-
abominable deeds have been
of gods. Horse sacrifice, pre- Weird ceremonial horses, usually known as hobby horses, still
gril;Ji","rpr".u,ion of the wishes
appear in various parts of Britain, from Kent to Cornwall and in
Sumably learnt from the same ,our"Jut that of the Scythialls,
dis- the north-west. Of these the Padstow horse, which processes in
went with the Aryan warriors into India. We have already the streets on Muy lst, is perhaps the most remarkable, for its
.urr.a the hippogu*o.,r ritual which attended it at the Asvam-
"Th.t. two rites, hippogamy and sacrifice of head is by no means unlike Magog's beast on the hill outside
heda ceremony.
from a Wandlebury Camp. This, however, is a horse connected with
horr"r, then ,i"* to have been spread in two directions the sea, for the performance is carried out by fishermen. It is not
sacrifice may never have been
common source of origin. Horse
performed on"a pole in lreland; but a myth-remained. surprising, for the Cailleach was intimately connected with the
".ar"1y they cannot sea as well as the land. Her breasts are only found on islands
Both rites are, to say theieast of it, so peculiar that
invention. Two rings of thotght, today, and her head projects into the ocean. Her husband was a
be the result oi i.,a.p.ndent
of origin, have spread out- sea god and she washed her blanket in Corrievreckan. Observers
presumabty with do**on point
"
iuurd, till they are now thousands of miles apart i Pt the last have noted traces of fertility rites in the Padstow ceremony. We
performeg il the Altai region. should not forget that, in Greek myth, Nepture turned himself
p"r. sacrifices of horses were into a stallion when he wished to seduce an unwilling maiden and
in time to that
These are no doubt very early niu,n"r, going back that his white horses still cover the sea in a breeze of wind.
We may safely say that their
of ,fr" early use of wai ch"riots. Horse races and processions figured largely in connection with
origin *uinot later than the early B1o1ze AS:lffI!'ni'u-oo
with the the old pagan festivals of Britain and are recorded from un-
years ago, and that the Great l\{other's association expected places, as well as near the great lron Age hill forts.
very modest estimate'
horse is older than that. I think this is a
and Great One of the most curious is the one which used to take place on
W'e can believe probably that the association of horse
of the Palaeolithic the island of Canna, on Lugh, or Michael's day. There the men
Mother is as oli u, the"Aurignacian hunters
lt9
rl8

L r.llJ
took their wives, sweethearts, or neighbours' wives on
their
village, the ceremony ending a
horses and raced round the ^in,
ilrr, provided by the women. aft. uneven character of the
g;"":J*lrere th; vi[age once stood makes it very hard to see
ifry horses were employed at all, unless they f91med a necessary
p"ri the ceremo"y. T*o-ancient crosses of late Pictish tyPe
stood"fin the neighbturhood of the ancient church, which
was
nineteenth century. One cross still
deliberat.ly a"siioyed in the
with other animals on its
stands with a man tiait g a horse, and
one of the most unusual roods in
face. The other, perhals
nri,"irr, has a huge serpent on one side with the figure_of christ,
small
and interlaced ,u".p.r,t on the other side (Fig'- l-5)' Y"y,
collecteq bt-Mrs. Campbell of
crosses from the rieighbourhood,
C"r,ru, testify to tftE high antiquity of ,h: site which we may
believe to have been p"gun tu*turty before the
coming:f
"
brrJrirti*ity. Much *igirt"ttrve been llarnt here, but for the
,i*t..rt *iiprtny felt fir it by a former owner. Not only ai-a
|e
removed the
a.riroy the ;h;;h and smastr itre memorials, but he
;ili"# and plougilA everything ,p: But a belief in the sith, the
so-ca"lled faiiies,ltitl clings to the place'
this kind
Of course we'are very i"ut the end of an age, and all
That is why it-is so imp_ortant to
of thing will soon be gone.
is still time to
snatch ip orr strands Jf itfo.*ation while there
do so. Iulor" than this, I do not think that future generations
will have the;tgha background from which to interpret ]he
of bringing
strands if they dJhappen t;notice them. The process
to a dismal uni-
in a unifo.* rrr"aaii of living tends produce
formity of knowledge, or of ignorance'
The bull is definiteiy less ilnportant than the horse. Bulls
are
tlie Continent and in Britain itself'
quite common in Celtii art on
Wars were f"rgrtt in ancient lreland for the possession of
bulls
"quatity. fn. Druids used white oxen when col-
of outstanding
bulls are found drawn on the Pictish
lecting th" misti"to.."fi".
size,
stones. The butl is a strong and virile beast and of massive
is a
and yet he is uncommott ii folk-tale or superstition. There
Goodwood racecourse and there are
Golden Calf buried near
water bulls in ftotland. Leaning on the rail of my boat in.{'och
na Beiste i" Sky;;i;;;. asked Jta Joh, Robertson, whose
birth-
hill, what was the beast after
pf"." was just I fL* miles over the
which the loctrwas named. 'I mind, boss,' he said, 'that an old
r9;0
Fig. t5. Stone cross-shaft from lsle of Canna. Length e ft. *| in.
Fragment of head of the cross apparently shows a second serpent.
Date uncertain, perhaps ninth century e.u.

L-
 witch if she did not wish to be recognized. Like the horse and
woman told me when was a lad [he was about eighty at the
I dog it was a beast closely associated with Diana. The psycholo-
time] that it was a bull with one }eg.' That is as near as I
have
bulls in pagan gist, Layard, wrote a book on the subject, which I had at one
ever got to any stories about bulls. There are no time, but which, like so many of my books, appears to have been
art'
saxon ornamental art and I cannot think of any in- Irish borrowed. However the hare in the classical world appears to
ones and
ih.r" are, however, quite a number of Romano-British in their own have been a symbol of the soul. In the Gaelic world the soul was
r;;. of these have three horns and are important a butterfly. People in lreland within the last century have
particular way. The bull figured largely in. Mithraic ritual. claimed to have seen a butterfly emerging from the mouth of a
bc"asionally you find the t.i* used. to describe a man of
out-
in the same dying person. I have no reason for supposing that this observa-
standing immorality. The name of ram. is, used
tion was correct.
.onrr".iion. As far is I can see no ghost bull and few figur:t
of
be occa'sional The hare is hardly the sort of animal which any warrior would
bulls have survived the Roman peri-od. There may willingly choose to have emblazoned on his shield; or by which a
those of
;;*p,i."s, like the armorial bulls of the Nevilles and may not tribe would enjoy being called. One remembers the story of the
clan Torquil, the Macleods of Lewis, whose name
'torus" a bull; but unfortunate Frenchmen at the time of Edward III's first cam-
come from Thorkel, or Thorketil, but from paign in France, who were knighted in a hurry because the
these are few and far between. We do know, however, that the
a carved bull's- English put up a hare and their shouts gave the impression of an
natives of Dorset, near the Cerne Giant, had impending attack. The derisive epithet ll{nights of the Hare'
head mask, known as the oozer, which is figured in
Margaret
from Sir James clung to them ever afterwards. So, except for hunting scenes,
tutur.uy's The God of the Witchr.s. We know also
there are few pictures of hares to give us any clue. It is, however,
cerem-ony
Fraser that bulls' skins were worn at the Hogmanay common enough in folk-lore for this to be of little account. We
i., S.ottund. These are enough for us to keep the bull on our
list'
and the relationship know that it was a beast of the Great Mother in Gaul, for it is
I have already talked ab6ut ghost dogs the only animal mentioned by name for which the hunter had to
between dogs u.rd th" ancient [ods. Dogt are common
on the
on a Saxon pot ask Artemis's permission before he killed it. This ties in well
Pictish stones. I have found one stamped Pagan-
enough with the witch familiars.
and they are common in the Christiair art of the whole of the
to be-noparticular Excluding all the lions and other foreign beasts over which
British Isles in the Dark Ages. There seems Diana held sway in warmer lands, I think we have produced
reason why a man should dr-aw a dog frequently than a b.ull,
lxoT to enough evidence to show that the same was true of the Great
except that it is more companionible. But there is no need
dogs all ;Mother in Celtic countries. Not only that, either in the guise of
.uy iror. than this. We hav" stories of supernatural the Devil, or the witches' familiar, she retained this property
ori". the coun6y. The Devil sometimes took the form of a dog at right down to modern times. There appears to be no break in the
witches' sabbat's. The dog was Diana's messenger. There
i.,1o
since the worshtp succession, for if there are gaps in one series they are made good
doubt at all that the beast figured at all periods
'We in others. If proof were needed that Diana of the Witches is the
of the Great Mother arrivJt in Britain. can leave it at that
or any_other aid' same as Danu, Macha, the Badb, the Cailleach, Magog and all
without turning to nursery rhymes, }eraldry. the rest, the animals seem to provide it.
of
The beast figur?d frequentiy as'a witch s familiar and the name
or", .Elva,ith" sister-inJaw of Lugh, has actually been pre-
served to form a link between the old gods and the witch
cult in
this country as well as in ItulY.
As far as I am aware only tir.". animals exist in popular
belief
as ghosts. These are the {ogt the white horse and the hare. of
adopted by a
ifr.iu three, the hare was thJform most frequently t28
122

L-
 all this time and that she was
just as much the goddess of
the horse, or bull, or cat, as
she was of the war galley.
Seamen, however, are
somewhat a race apart and
Chapter Nine are more international than
any other class of men. The
worship of Isis, as I have sug-
gested before when I men-
tioned the blessing of the
wr.H#:i:f ,TI;:i,:T;Ti#H:*:il:irffi.ffweiJ[i;
live
Breton fleet of Terraneuvas,
was hardly different in the
that fr", .y*Loi *"t light war galley. Although
and a
eastern Mediterranean of
;;"rrfio thor.*d laler, t think we know a little more
years-
classical times from that of the
;;"; it than he di; and our knowledge is largely dYu_,.o
Christian Bretons of today.
research. The reason *hy the symbol of Isis
"i"rr"""r"gical galley is Names only have changed,
among the ancestors of the swedes should have been a
the ritual remains. Even in
quiteeasy,o'"".Thehighstemandsternofsuchavessel England, the mayor of Col-
;rgg#d ,fr" t o*r of Isis;s moon_, j-ust as the shape of ahorse's chester, who goes out and
ir;oo? rugg.r,"d it. The wish was
faiher to the thought'-Seamen
ships and they saw eats his oysters at the opening
wanted the Great Mother to protect their of the fishing season, is taking
2-.
that'
- tig" in their shape' It-is as easy asS*"d,e1
het
there are places the place of the priests of Isis,
i;;;.ts of southirn Norway,u"d
drawings of ships, who figured so vividly in The
where the rocks are covered with engraved Golden.4ss. This is one of the Fig. t6.
whichfully.o,,fi,*theinformation-slveltoTacitus.Thuy really dramatic survivals of ( t)Bronze figure of Isis type (a
appeartorangeoveratleastl,Soo-ytutt.intimeandtostillhave it crescent moon has probably
strand picks m:T rtn an ancient custom, and was
been made in itre Iron Ag.. The heraldic as widespread. In the north of been broken from the front of
i" the arms of famTlies in Orkney a1d $e west oftheScot- Lewis, not so very long ago, her diadem) from the temple
"g;n- Of course
land. lives near
*" *"y say that u.ryottl who sea
of the Seine. Duck's head and
men waded into the sea,
,.., people using ii all ihe time, will naturally^draw tlltx:
them. I,ut tnls poured beer into it and im-
tail on the galley which is
".ra
nut them o, hir coat of arms if he happens to_orvn clearly ancestral to the North-
was worshipped plored Shony (Sithonaidi),
ffi;;.";dJ" Tacitus,s observati,on that Isis the holy one, to give them of
ern Longships.
in this form. ih"ou."rvations of archaeologists _have clearly (q) 'Isi.s' bird and fish on a
and he was pre- its fruits. This is precisely modern Highland coaster
shown that Tacitus was right in one particular the same ritual, although
;;;t right in the otf,.t. The word 'Isis' was only his ( Ben Hiant).

connected with the sea, a cailleach curtailed through time, as

definition of a moon goddess
"n"o* that described by Apuleius. And yet we are told that the
what name was really used by^the
in fact. W" ao- "o, people of Lewis are mostly descendants of Norsemen, while
ancientSwedesu"ai.probablywouldbeofnohelptg.,'ifwe they have the serpents and bulls of the Cailleach, and call on
did, We will call her Isis in ihis chapter; although
I have.no
we have been watching the holy one in Gaelic. The Norse strain, which was undoubtedly
aouut she is the same Great Mother whom r25
t24
there in the ninth century, must have been largely bred
out : the sea and only saved by human sacrifice of the king's son. How
The Lewismen take to the sea and the could they have been pursued unless the people of Colchis were
ifrrougn the centuries. I

ttfifi* to the ar*,'r but so_ would you if you lived in one or seamen and had fast vesselsi There are several important clues
,frJ other of the islands. It is a topographical and not an ;i in this story. The first is the Fleece itself. [t is an emblem of the
ethnographical matter. !I trade of Colchis, for fleeces \ryere used by gold-washers to col-
So there we are with Isis being worshipped
in suchdiverse places lect the particles of gold brought down by the streams. Jason
as Sweden, Brittany and Lewls, and are flced
with Tacitus:s il was a Greek pirate, no less, and he came to get possession of the
problem of ho* she get thereat all (Fig' to)' gold-washing industry. At that time it was a habit of adven-
The answ", ,""*i to be that she got there at a very- gully turous Greeks to go to places where matriarchy still prevailed,
period and came, not with thetrue Iron Age celts,
but with the marry the heiress and so succeed to the throne. Jason did this,
;;;t Bronze Age proto-Celtic wave of civilization. The clue but failed to establish himself and fled with the heiress, hoping to
*r,rt be of cou*Ji.rih. ships. ln Gogmagog I made some attempt return and claim the throne later. But the expedition was a failure
to identify the origin of the particulir form of ship drawn ^on^tfe and the Greeks never did obtain colchis. I am writing as if this
coasts of Asia
Scandinavian rocfs and was led towards the j were a story of an episode in the lives of one set of people. Of
Minor. It was in this comparatively large and mountainous area course it was nothing of the kind. It is the legend of an attempt
that the Hatti, or Hittiterl t".* tohave originated, whose gods made by Greek adventurers to seize an important source of
left their names on the tablets of Bogaz-Keui' Fourteen hundred wealth and it was attended by war and failure. Colchis was too
were
y"rrc before the birth of Christ, Indra, Miffa and Varuna rich and powerful to be taken as Troy was. Nobody has paid
Baal and Ashtoreth apparently very much attention to the possibilities of Colchis, but they will
already names of importance.
in the motintains of Asia Minor, while ships bearing have to do so.
"rigl"l,.d
,orfi" resemblance to those on the Scandinavian pictures
were in Recently some splendid graves have been published from
use on the southern coast. celtic legends of their origin pre- Dorak, near the sea of Marmara. These contained swords,
served. in the Barddas say that the cwmry came from a summer- spears and daggers of Early Bronze Age type, but with blades of
land of lakes and mountains. The celtic festivals indicate
an gold and silver. They are weapons of shapes which would be
originamongpastoralpeoples,whodistinguished.betwe.en dated in England to about l4Oo s.c. But this is a thousand years
tgpite
summer and wirit er graziig.'S"trpt of informationlegil too late for those at Dorak. In one grave were found five gold
up. There are othe"rs. RJia Minor is more or less halfway and silver statuettes of a goddess and her attendants; no gods.
and
between India and Britain. only a people used to mountains On one of the silver sword-blades are engraved many ships. In
sea coast, *o,rid deliberately go io countries like Scandinavia these graves we seem to see representations of both Isis and her
and scotland. The originatoit or cailleach and Isis
beliefs must ships, for the goddess (trig. tt (a)) has a hair-style and orna-
been people ments resembling those of the Iron Age figure from Faardal in
t been both hillmen-and seamen. Theycannothave
rr"
rules out like the foothills of the Alps' Denmark ( FiS. t t (b)). The hands indicating the breasts and the
of inland plains. This areas
Hi-"i"yis, it does not exclude Asia Minor,
A1tai and so on. But hair in a pig-tail down the back suggest a family relationship to
an area in which religions seem often to have been born' But did Magog at Wandlebury (FiS. tz). Recently James Mellart has
'we can take it from found the Dorak hair-style some thousands of years earlier on
the peoples of Asia"Minor use the sea?
Cr."t myth that they did and a sea, too, which can be remarkably pottery figurines of the Neolithic period. This indicates that both
formidable at times. ships and goddess came to Scandinavia from Asia Minor at a
When the Argonauts had made their voYl$" to, Colchis' very early period.
stolen the Gold.riFl.".u and fled with it and the
king's daughter,
*ho *", probably even more important, they were pursued on
t26 t27

L.,.I
 held them had any ideas which might help us today. Things
which appeared to be primitive Jup.rrtiiio.,, when science
knew all the answers, may not now be as stupid as they seemed
fifty years ago.
It is hard to make a study of this kind impartially, for the
results are bound to be coloured by the poinf of view held by
Chapter Ten the observer at the time he makes ii. rnis is true of every study
of the past, for the whole can never be known. All history is a
summary_ o_f wha! is known, distorted to some extent by the
opinions held by the man who writes it. If he is a socialist, hL wil
IT-IHE value of all research connected with the study of *IrJ: it in quite a different manner from a conservative. Things
e"iiquity lies in the lessons which can be drawn from the which appear laudable to one age seem abominable to another.
I
way our incestors behaved in given circumstances' It is other-
You can say that the battle of Naseby was fought in 1645 and
you can walk over the fields and pick up a mus[et ball to show
*iJ" simply the collection of information of entertainment value
than public entertainers' Many that it was fought on a particular piecl of ground. But no his-
ur,a itr practitioners no more torian agrees with another as to what went o., in the heads of the
p."pr" *itrr a smattering of psychology regard archaeology-and
commanding officers and still less as to the thoughts of the rank
i,rii"ared subjects as no more than in escape flom the troubles and file. Yet this was a most important event ald only a little
of the modern worlcl. But there is more to it than that and the
l"r.o16 it teaches are by no means negligible,_ especially to more than three hundred years ago. How much less reliable
must be our guesses at the reasons for the actions of prehistoric
townsmen, who are on the whole Pretty helpless creatures'
man. Therefore what I have to say in this section is no-more than
ar"rr".orogy has shown how throrgh long ages.-man steadily
a summaryof what I happen to think at this particular time. It is
forced the"ptwers of nature to serve his ends; until he reached
a

rirg" *t he can d_estroy- the whole lot of them should that quite possible that further evidence may show me that I am
fu"3y "."
take him. Whether ii has really_produced an evolutionary wrong in these views and then I shall change them with no re-
ri"ry of man himself according to the Darwinian pattern T.*ot" qr.!. It is the true answer which is being sought and not a pat on
t[eories are no longer the ultimate the head for writing a passable exam paper.
th; doubtful and Darwin's
we will start with what appears to & a fundamental faith of
trrif, that they were once thought to be' - MTy people are pianic believers. They hold that men are born again on this
U"gi""i"g to feel that, atthough th"r" is such " tht"g as evolu-
tio"n, it nEeds some external pish to make it work. The
storyof earth and that intercession with their goddess will-ensure that
the neck of the giraffe, whiih grew conlinyllly^longer by the
the Lord of the Underworld, whose job-it is, will put them back
',
process of 'natufrl selection ' ,nd ' survival of the fittest aroused
into it among the friends they loved in this life. This belief is
considerable amusement when someone asked what happened
to known as reincarnation and differs from what is presumably an
the top elaboration of it, known as transmigration. In transmigrition
the children before their necks were long enough to reach
you will not only be born ag1in, buiir you have done uiaty in
branches of the trees. When scientists, to whom the ultimate
truth was to be revealed when they could examine the smallest this life you may find yourself born in animal form. This dis-
forms of matter, reached a stage in-which they could distinguish
turbing belief may picture the cat snoring in front of the fire as
no difference between it and mind, the materialism of the last ygut late grandmother, or a worm on t[e Iawn as your uncle.
century became obsolete. It will take some time to die, but it
is You go up and down the scale according to how you p.ogress in
already doomed. We have reached therefore a time in which
it is
IoT earthly life. People lolding this riitrr "rnnot kiil aiything
worth while examining ancient beliefs to see whether those that for fear of it being some friend or relation. Transmigratidn was
r28 t2,9
 by the Druids and the Pythagorean...h.ool It is hard to see a flaw in the results. But the reader must form
accepted as a dogma his own opinion on this. I am not taking sides. This is a study of
of Greeks. It is itro trita by many Hindus 1od_aY: The
classical
ior how the belief was found primitive religion and not a work on psychical research.
neooles were unable to account
I*J"S ,h. p.opt.t of Gaul and Britain. It seems probable that it The picture derived from the study of the information pur-
Iron Age Celts and came from porting to have been supplied by Myres and many others, is
*"r U?"rght it to Britain by the
most int_eresting, f9I it corresponds closely to the beliefs held by
the same ientral source as tiat which exported it to
both Greece
many religions and is of very great antiquity. The only possibll
and India. explanation appears to be that all these religions originated in
people, was
Reincarnation, a perfectly plausible idea to most the same way. That is tley were derived from informition sup-
h.iJ;t the Christiin Church until about a.p. 5oo. It was then
apparently after this' plied by mediums. If this is the correct interpretation, it ls
declared a heresy. At some date, l:119'g another yery strong argument for regarding the Myres type of
an addition to ihe creed substituted the belief that men rose
This idea, palpably absurd to anyone communication as correct. If it were not so, we ought suiely to
,Sril with their bodies. find great variations.
has only regenllyJost
*io f,u, seen the effects of high explosive,
of Buddhists' The picture of the next stage of existence derived from the
ground. Reincarnation is one"of the main doctrines automatic communications is briefly summed up as follows:
towards freeing- themselves
Most of their energies are d.irected
The whole Universe from galaxy to electron is the product of
from what is callel the 'Wheel of Life', that is from an un-
in pain and misery' a universal Mind and it is only kept in being by the thought of
bearable succession of lives spent
that mind. A whole hierarchy of thinking units in desce-nding
In recent times the doctrine of reincarnution has received
a
results of psychical research' A grades of intelligence exists throughout the Universe and all
remarkable impetus from the
can be described as part of the Universal Mind. Each grade of
be found in
very good r,,*irury and discussion of this work is to
have all intelligence is a component of a higher grade. Some capacity for
R. C. i fit Imprisoned,
Johnson' Splendouy. Tye results
thought exists in the smallest particle of matter, which is ihus,
been obtained and stili are being obtained at what may--be in a sense, a mind. However dead and inert sorne objects may
termed second, hand. The work".-t .rt" what we would
call a
.medium,, a person who is known in their terminology as a ap_pear to us, yet each object contains untold millions of tiny foCi
com- of thought. Man on earth appears to be at the lowest stage of
.
sensitive;. T.ir. work has been carried out with the greatest permanent, that is immortal, intelligence. He, as an individual,
If it were only a matter of studying
t;";; and scientific care. is one unit in a larger mind, which is known as a Group soul.
laornr, or fleas, it is improbable that anYone would question
,h" nrairrg.. ih" information obtained through the *:d!T:' This in itself is far below the highest grade of intelligenie; but
will ultimately raise itself to a higher standard. The Group Soul
either by iirect speech or through what is known as automattc has a varying number from twenty or thirty to one thdusand
writing, purports to come fronipersons who are no t91g"t -'" human souls belonging to it. It is born as a thought of the Uni-
this w6rli, brt-huve passed fromit to another planlof life'
The
is supposedly the. cele- versal MTd, perfect in itself, but without knowledge. wisdom
most notable of these communicators and knowledge have to be collected for it by its comfonent souls
brated Cambridge Personality, F' W' H' Myres' who died
in
on lower levels of existence. Its component souls retiin their own
t902.
-- individuality, but are part of the Group Soul. They are immortal.
Myr., is believed to have ffansmitted a great bulk of infor- Most There are several planes to be passed through by each in-
mati6n through the writings of - various sensitives' dividual soul before it gains complete contact with its present
elaborate -.ui, were devisef for checking and cross-checking
split up Group Soul. When it has done this, the evolutionary proc"ss still
these writings. Messages with difficult allusions were
writers, collected at a central,point, continues, but is no concern of us here. The reason we cannot
among several automa"tic make direct contact with our particular Group Soul on this plane
and then studied with care'
ioi..a","gether again in one message lgl
180

t
of earth is that it exists at a higher frequency than
we do' our sooner or later, the urge to rise to higher planes drives eagh
t"'y-t'"trow range and we are unable individual either to force himself to go up higher, or to return to
Uoaiiy t"nses have only u
which are passing earth once more to sharpen his intelligence, for further advance,
; ;;;, feel, or hear irru*.tuble vibrations
ifrrougt, us all the time. Rare individuals, either as a result of in that more drastic environment. The communications of
i;;g,f;t techniques, or som_e freak of their bodily construction, Myres and others state that this reincarnation does not nor-
u-p the rate of mally occur more than four times; although occasional cases are
do make contact *itft their Group Soul by steppin-g
with their Group- Soul appears to found in which persons with special interests on earth may return
their vibrations. The contact
since the group belonging t9 th." as many as nine times. It is clear moreover from the communica-
them to be contact with God.
Cror,p Soul .orrrirt, of both male and Temale members, both tions that the urge to be born again and even the choice of
male and female deities are reported from time to time'
Real parentage is thought to be in the hands of each individual and is
contact with Coa it on so far higLer a plane as-to-be inconceivable nothing to do with the parents. Their part in the matter is
to us. Even then it would only be contact with the entity simply to provide a body with which the individual concerned
resPon-
universe. There is no need at can be born. The individual's choice of a future earthly body is
sible for rururing this particular
thi, ,,"ge for to bother-his head about it' limited however by what is known as the'Law of Karma'. This
It is iold thai our" earthly plane of existence is the first and
"r"yot is a kind of sum of cause and effect of all thoughts and actions,
that real contact with the Group Soul is not established
till the good or bad, in previous earthly lives. Karma affects the whole of
i"rirft plane. There are, howi't'"t, stag-e-s in the planes and the individual's life on earth. It is said that one individual of a
;r"ir; differ as to how many there are. up to the fourth plane, group can take over the karma that another has built up. Thus 4
fri*.r"t, "ll these worlds, if we may -call th-""'-to' are located !n 'first-timer' would take over the karma of an individual of tha
They are invisible same group who had completed his turns of duty.
ih" ru*"portion tf ,pu." as the visible earth.
to us owing to the diherence in the rates of vibration. Members of a group are to be found on all levels up to and
Man, *. consists of three coexistent bodies, of including the one above the Astral (third), for the Group Soul as
"."-irrformed,
*nirn o"fy the eaithly Uoay is known to us. The soul is wrapped a whole has to wait until all members of the group have com-
,f i" theie bodies. t.t*it'ology is particu'1,1', tiresome here' pleted their passages through the lower levels. When this is
ttim.t to bodies' They complete the group as a whole can move up to a higher level.
ancl differ.rrt *.ii"r. gi.r" ditrerint these
aDDear, fro*.,r"r,,o closely to insect metamorphosis' Occasional individuals are found who are completely incapable of
-'A ofirfot*ation is thought, howevel, to
"Srr"spond
body advancing. These are simply thought about no longer and fall out
whlch,ts
have been obtained ibout tife on the third plane,.
"o"siderabll of existence.
The third plane is obviously the Perhaps the most important piece of information for our study
relevant to our investigation.
It to not at all unlike the is that very rare individuals are occasionally created at a higher
Heaven of *ury r.iigi["t. is said bL
version of o, i"hi.h we live, but is more beautiful and level than the Group Soul. They go down to earth for a single
largely devoid"urti,of sress and strain. There is little incentive to life of great importance and return after it to a high level again.
shirp* one's rvits. People create their own homes andthere su*ound'- These are tle great religious teachers of the world and are
i"gt fot their o*n plea^sure as they ag.9l but is no known to Hindu religion as 'Avatars'. Christ, Krishna and
"uT,h'
being bodily hult' Gautama Buddha are obvious examples. However, it seems to
,."g"rr"y or drive about it and no plssibility of
Since the whoi" of existence is, it seems, to advance-the me that the individual dimly portrayed in the witches' Vangelo
"Ui"., i!, by the pooling as Aradia was another.
intellectual power oithe individual and throuqh
or uro*tedge, of the Group soul, the third plane is rather a This is a very brief, but I hope comprehensive and understand-
quiet back-water. able, summary of what virtually amounts to a new faith, pro-
People maY live on it and enjoy it for long periods, but, duced by the efforts of highly skilled workers on the subject of
132 t89
psychical research. The care taken to ensure that it is correct has compulsion to experience every form of existence in order to
been enormous. But with so intangible and important a subject, learn to distinguish good from evil and also to bring this
which may well be incapable of scientific proof, everyone must knowledge back to God. This is the real theory of transmigra-
form his own oPinion. tion of souls and 4ppears to be only an extension of the belief in
We will nowtry to compare this summary with those of other reincarnation. 'Every living and animate being shall tra-
beliefs and see wliat comes of it. Perhaps it is as well to begin verse the circle of Abred from the depth of Annwn, that is the
with the Druids. Their beliefs, as I explained earlier in this extreme limits of what is low in every existence endued with
book (p. Zg), have only survived in relatively modern works; life; and they shall ascend higher and higher in the order and
but intirnal evide.tc" tuggests that they are perfectly genuine graduation of life, until they become man, and then there can be
survivals. They may *ett have become somewhat garbled an end of the life of Abred by union with goodness. And in death
through centuries of iepetition, but nevertheless the main ideas they shall pass to the circle of Gwynvyd, and the Abred of
p;;bubly correct. fhe Druidic conceptiol of the world con- necessity will end for ever. And there will be no migrating
"r"
sisted of three concentric globes, the centre of which is Cythraul, through every form of existence after that, except in the right
the Abyss. Outside the Abyss is the first circle known as Annwn, and liberty of choice united with Gwynvyd, with a view to re-
which lort".ponds with the plane of earthly existence. Outside experience and re-seek knowledge.'
this agair, the circle, or sphere, of G-wynvyd, which we The reader will see how closely this bardic theory resembles
"d*"r
*"y r""gard as the third plane, or astral, of the psychical re- that of the psychical research communications. Yet here we
seaich ti.ory. At the extreme outer limit of GwynvYd comeg the must observe the time factor. The communications, believed to
sphere of Clugant, which corresponds to the higher levels of have been received from Myres are the product of this century.
eternity. The Barddas, from which I have been quoting, were published in
God, according to Druidic belief, created all living _things t862. They are said to have been taken from old manuscripts
from the smallesiparticles of light and 'in every particle there is collected in a house which was destroyed by the Roundheads
a place wholly commensurate with God, for there is not, and more than two hundred years before this. Whether Myres, who
cannot be, less than God in every particle of light, and God in died in 1902, had come across the publications of the Welsh
every purti.l"; nevertheless God is on]Y_ one in number'. God lv{anuscript Society, I have no means of telling; but even if he
all living things in the circle of G_wynvyd, on the astral had done so in his earthly life, the problem remains of how they
"r.ri.d
plane. But the living things wished to be Gods and attempted to could have become restated in automatic scripts. This seems
the sphere ofteugant, the planes above the astral, and so virtually impossible. There appear to be only two alternatives.
"ross
they fell down to Annwn, the earth. Here, once again, Y: q"d The fi.rst is that these ideas are circulating in the subconscious
LuJifer, the being created from light, _attempti"q_19 go-higher minds of large numbers of people beneath the religious beliefs
than had been iniended and falling- to the earth, 'Where', as the which they appear outwardly to hold. The second is that they
bards had it, 'is the beginning of all living owners of terrestial are genuine attempts to report on an actual state of affairs which
bodies.' Living beings did not know how to distinguish evil it is difficult to describe in words.
from good and"so th+ had to go down to earth to traverse this Another reason for supposing that the Barddas do actually
sph"rf till they ."*" back at last to Gwynvy$ aqain. {rrr* state the Druidic faith is that the classical authors frequently
to havl had the alternative name of Abred, but- in any expressed their surprise that the beliefs in Britain and Gaul
"pp"u.r
case it is not easy to remember these Welsh names and thgy are should be the same as the Pythagorean doctrines found in the
not necesrury to-the und.erstanding 9f the Druidic belief' This, it Meditemanean. The reader who wishes fuller information
is clear, *ulh resembled the one built up from the automatic should consult Sir Thomas Kendrick's The Druids. Caesar (De
writings. However, in addition, man was believed to have the Bello Gallico, Book 6) evidently took a great interest in the
134 t95

h -..,L
subject and for a time had expert knowledge from a Druid Indian religion is so complex in fact that it is improbable that
Divitiacus, the .Eduan, at his headquarters. From Caesar we itis by any means completely sorted into its component parts by
learn that the purest form of Druidism was to be found in scholars. Layers of religious thought rest one upon anotherund
Britain. Students of their lore had to commit great numbers of are believed to be the result of succeeding waves of conquest by
verses to memory. It is noticeable that a large portion of the invaders passing into the country. This is certainly true of the
Barddas is indeed in verse and known as the Triads. There are well-authenticated invasions by Moslems and ispresumably true
several versions of the surviving Triads preserved in the of the entry of the people known as Aryans. However, if we look
Barddas. They differ slightly from each other and have the at those parts of Hindu religion which are supposedly the result
appearance of having been collected in different Parts_ of Wales. of Aryan immigration and remember that the opinions of
No such bulk of material, however, survives as could possibly scholars vary anywhere between gooo and tSoo n.c. for the date
have taken the twenty years to commit to memory that classical of this immigration, the thought must cross our minds that there
writers claim to have been sometimes necessary. However, what was not one Aryan invasion but several. The picture is like, but
remains appears to contain all the essential details that we need even morecomplicated than, thatof westem Europe. There is even
to know. a resemblance between the general types of the peoples them-
Since the Pythagorean teaching closely resembled that of the selves. No religious belief ever seems to have vanished once it
Druids, there is no need to examine it here. However, there has became established in lndia and it never seems to have remained
been considerable speculation amongst scholars as to whether static in the way Christianity and Islam remained static. The
Pythagoras obtained his ideas from the Indian sages, who ha$ beliefs evolve and merge in a most bewildering manner. Even
apparently established some kind of missionary connection with the earliest form of the Aryan beliefs contained in the Veddas,
the Near East in his day. It has been suggested also that Druidism which are thought to have been written in Sanscrit at least
reached Gaul and Britain by way of the Greek colonies in 2,5oo years ago, give evidence of a combination of faiths at that
southern France. On the whole, however, it seems more likely early time. Conquering races often adopted the gods of the con-
that Druidism was the accepted belief of the Cwmry when they quered and sometimes turned them into races of demons, who
arrived in Britain about 4OO s.c. and that th"y received no direct were at times more powerful than their own gods. At other times
teaching from the south. There is no doubt a considerable they accepted them among their own,gods. The area of India is
resemblance between the Brahministic doctrines of India and so large, has been so frequently invaded and is so remote in
those of the Druids, but there is also the same degree of resem- thought from our western world, that it is almost impossible for
blance between the older gods of the two areas. Hu and Brah- us to form a simple picture, either of its beliefs or of the races
man may be the same concept; but so are Balor and Siva. The which make up its population. The best summary of the religious
art of the Celts derives the origins of some of its Patterns from side of the problem that I have seen is in the recently published
Greece and the Near East, as can be seen demonstrated in Larousse Encyclapedia oJ Mythology.This is not quite what we
Professor Jacobstahl's Celtic Art; but these forms had become need for our attempt at comparison, but is very good for the
part of Celtic life long before the Celts of the lron Age settled in subject as a whole.
Britain. We may observe and accept the link between the two At the bottom of the scale are negroid tribes, not unlike the
areas and still not agree that the connecting route lay through Aborigines of Australia, who are totemistic in belief. They do
the Mediterranean. It seems most unlikely that it did. The route not concern us except to note that these beliefs seem to have
was probably a land one through central Europe and also the preceded the anthropomoyphic all over the world. Higher up the
time was some centuries earlier than the establishment of the scale come the Dravidians. These Dravidians, a small, dark,
Greek colonies in southern France. It has not been even proved long-headed race, have many of the characteristics of the Neo-
that Brahminism originated in India at all. lithic people right across the ancient world to western Europe
196 t97
 qqalities in that land. He is the god of conquering warriors,
and Britain. It
is this type of man who is mistakenly known as a who had evolved him elsewhere. we may be justified'in imagin-
Celt in Wales and lreland, The Dravidians, akin to peoples in ing that the story of Michael and Lucifer, or rather Michaelind
Mesopotamia, were relatively highly civilized. Their ancient the old Dragon, originated in the tale of Indra and vrita and
cities, such as Mohenjo-Daro and Hrappa, are being explored that it_Tuy even have been reflected in the.Teutonic story of
today. It is believed that they were matriarchal and that their Beowulf and Grendel. Indra is often considered as forming a
gods were only female. The absence of male gods is improbable, trinity with varuna and Mitra, but he appeais to be quite J'is-
but the goddeises may well have been thought of greater impor- tinct. He is in human form and in far-off days muy have
tance. Some of them survived the Aryan invasion and conquest, "re,form;
lived as a man. varuna and Mitra scarcely appear in human
becoming wives to the gods of the conquerors. Durga and Kali; they are counterparts of one another. Mitra is the sun; varuna
both of them now considered as wives to the Aryan Siva, are the moon. Together they have universal power and protect law,
goddesses who once ruled Dravidian life (fig. 7)- Kali ha$"so order and right. Mitra was known in persia; but there his
many points of resemblance to the Mother Goddesses of Britain brother, varuna, was not found. lnstead he was associated with
and Ireland that I feel she must have an identical origin. the great Persian god, Ahura Mazda. often spoken of as the
The Aryan invaders were organized in three classes, the 'Knights' in the early vedic writings, they are also healers.
warriors, priests and ondihary tribesmen, which correspond to Their parents were the sun and the cloud goddess, but the sun
those of Ireland in pagan times. In India, where the Aryans made was not Indra. They therefore belonged at one time to a differ-
determined efforts to prevent their stock becoming mixed with ent cycle of beliefs, which can be identified as far west as Rome
that of the conquered Dravidians, the three Aryan classes have in the great twin brethren, castor and Polux. They do not
become rigidly fixed as castes, with a fourth caste of theconquered appear to come into our story.
peoples at the bottom. It is curious that the gods of the warrior The horse sacrifice and the ritual mating of the rajah's wife
caste, the Kshatriyas, although belonging to Brahmanism as a to a stallion have been studied earlier in this book, and com-
whole, are more or less confined to that caste; while the Brah- pared with cases of similar ritual in the British lsles. In the
manic caste, the priestly one, pays particular devotion to another Indian case the stallion represented the sun and the ritual was in-
group. The favourite gods of the Kshatriyas, Indra, Mitra and tended to endow the realm with fecundity. In Donegal in the
Varuna, are dated back as long ago as l4,OO B.c. on the celebrated t-we|{h century A.D., the same rite was apparently carried out by
tablets of Bogaz-Keui,' where they are quoted as witnessing a the king on his installation. Here, however, the king was mated
peace treaty between the Hittites and Mitanni. There they to and had actually to eat a white mare and bathe in a bath
appear less as anthropomorphic gods than as ancestral kings, of broth made from her meat. This surely means that the
who had become deified. They resemble in fact such personali- I
rite was older than the Indian one and belonged at one time to a
ties as Woden from whom most Anglo-Saxon kings claimed matriarchal phase of society. In this case then it probably came
descent. The semi-mythical Ragnar Lodbrog was on the way to with the Aryans, who had picked it up from the ancesiors of
becoming such a god among the pagan Norsemen. Indra much tribes who in the Altai, as was noted earlier, still perform horse
resembles Zeus combined with other Greek deities. Besides his sacrifice, or did so until the days of photography.
chariot and arrows, he wields a thunderbolt. His chariot be- The link with the witch cult here is found in the witch trials
comes the sun and, like Michael, he destroys the great obstruc- published by Margaret Murray. The Devil, in the guise of a
tive dragon, Vritra. He represents the benevolent forces of horse or other animal, mated with the women of the iongrega-
nature and has some rebemblance to Hercules and Dagda; but is
at a later stageofrevolution, perhaps more cornparable to.Lugh. !io". Although the object was to ensure the fertility of mi, ina
beast, the ritual represented the union of Diana and pan.
Indra is clearly not a.pqoduct of Indian soil; although, as bi'inger In the case of the King of Donegal and the white mare, which
of the monsoon to the parched plains, he has developed soine 139
138
 the popular deities belonging really to the lower castes. These
presumably represented the Great Mother as the moon, the
Indian rite the rajah's appear later on the stage than the gods of the ancient Vedic
ioririont "f *r" sexes are reversed. In the In Gaul, writings; but this does not mean that they are newer ideas. They
*if" ,"presented the moon and the stallion tJre sun. This are probably rising once more from the ruin of their former
E ;"" i"s descended from the union of a man with a mare'
worship. Although in India little seems to be ever lost and the
tr; earlier phase than that of India, being nearer to the totemic
.myths of these gods and demons, from whom they are hard to
origir"t. Thi anthropomorphic-god had to be mated to the totem
distinguish, are much more complete, we can see in this mass of
bea-st, who was the mother of the tribe'
popular gods a similarity to the beliefs of ancient Ireland as
This horse marriage rite in India seems to be earlier than the
transcribed particularly in the Ulster cycle. Layer upon layer of
Varuna-Mittra stagel but it may have been part of the Dravidian
r"iigio" in which butgu and kali were forms of the Mother belief exists, each layer probably representing some long-for-
gotten conquest or immigration. Our folk stories in England are
Goddess; or, as I sugg-ested before, it may have been imported
from a different aril Durga, like Indra, whom she preceded, the remains of just the sarne sequence of beliefs and their con-
fusion is due to similar causes.
Jesgoyed a dragon, or rathJr a demon, and released it in human
form. 'n ir *"f be the matriarchal form of the Michael-Indra We will mention a few of these popular deities for the sake of
comparison, but it would be quite impossible here to do more
dragon triumPh.
than give a hurried glance at a vast subject. Rudra was clearly
ff," priestfy caste in India had such a complication of beliefs not an Aryan god, for he is not permitted to share in their
*r"i it * quit" impossible to attempt to-sort fhem out in a short
sacrifice of Soma. He is lord of animals and god of the dead,
section of a book.-Brahman was originally a kind of cosmic force,
to Hu the Mighty of the Druids. In his original which makes us think at once of Nuada and the witches'Lord of
"ompurublehe appears to have 6"".t not unlike the modern idea of the Underwbrld. It is interesting too that a horse god, Rudiobos,
"""J"ption was worshipped in ancient Gaul. Rudra and his consort, Prisni,
a Cosrnic Mind- Lreating everything. He has, however' become
goddess,of the dark, appear to have been a Great Father and
anthropomorphic to many Brahmins and is represented as a man
with four heaas. There *Lt" once five; but Siva burnt one of them Mbther, with the emph:tsis now on the father.
Siva, the great destroyer and at the same time the bringer of
offby looking at it.
Ifrtod.* Hindu ascetics by the study of their ancient scriptures fertility, is apparently a later version of Rudra and still shares
pride of place with Vishnu in popular belief. Siva was married to
and thepractice of Yoga, have accepled afaith which corresponds
the findinlgs of psychiial research and thus has much what is evidently a triple Dravidian goddess of destruction,
"im"fy'*i,tt known as Durga, Parvate and Uma. This triple representation of
in common with Druid-ism. It-includes a belief in transmigration
a deity is typical also of Gaulish gods. There seems little doubt
and you must kill nothing. whether this belief is of extreme
anti{uity and was Ury1S"r1 into India with the original Aryan that Kali, Mahadevi and other goddesses are just different
conquerors, ts very diffiJult,to rryj But it certainly appears as. if
names for the same deity. Since Rudra was also accompanied by
the main ideas go back at least five hundred years before the the same goddesses, there appears to be little reason for not
"by assuming that he is identical with Siva. Siva was clearly too a sun
birth of Christ, which time Buddhism became an offshoot
god like Balor at some period, or in one phase, for he burnt up
from it. Beneatir ttris high Brahministic conception, however, is a
people with his fiery glance. To us Siva seems hard to distinguish
welter of belief in aithropomorphic gods and demons, in
frightening numbers and with devastating names. Agni, Ignis to from a demon; although Durga destroyed a particularly
ferocious one. Siva, however, is credited as being a bringer of
thilatin iorld, the god of fire and wind, is of primary import- fertility as well as destruction and is represented by the lingam,
ance and at orr. ii*. ipp"utt to have been a bodiless conception,
phallus, in popular belief. His wife, Mahadevi is represented by
possibly a variant of Brihma or a thoughtof Brahma.
the female yoni symbol. As this symbol is cornmon on rocks in
Of greater interest to this particular inquiry, however' are
t40 t4t
Scandinavia on which the ships and other symbolic pictures are
found, it suggested a link between the two areas to several 3-rly Europeans rnust have read, known as the Bhagavad-Gita.
modern scholars. These yoni symbols are also found in Scotland,
Tlis Gita really contains the core of Hindu philosophy. Krishna
particularly the east, often on sites of the earliest metal age.
is both god and man; mankind is eternal, although its earthly
bodies die; no human being can ever be kilted. th" whole of
Vishnu, the other great popular deity, is very unlike Siva;
ea-rthly life is in fact a delusion. There is no objection to killing
although he assumed many disguises to destroy demons.
others, or being slain yourself, for, as Krishni explains to hii
Vishnu is a much more abstract conception. His appearance is
p-1pil, the prince Ajuna, 'They are dead already.' They are also
later than the Vedic literature of the Aryans and he appears to
alive always. As Krishna hai many lives in different'forms, so
belong to a different stratum of society. Vishnu is a solar deity,
have they. The whole thing is very like the Druidic ideas in the
but so apparently is Siva; they can hardly have come from the
Barddas.
same stratum. Neither of them is really Aryan and one must
Hindu religious men through ascetism and the practice of yoga
suppose that they originated in different parts of the Dravidian
strive to attain a state in which they are in touch with higher
world and have risen to popularity again with the passage of the
levels of existence. The reports of those who have reached-this
centuries. Indra and Vishnu defeated the Lord of Darkness,
s_tage are extremely like those supposedly reported by Myres
Vritra, a theme which we are not dealing with in this book, but
through automatic writing and studied by the soiiety- for
which I attempted to trace in Britain in Gogmagog. Indra was the -
Psychical Research. But they also bear some resemblance to
sun god of the Aryan warriors and here we appear to find a stage
another kind of research being carried out today in a more
in the merging of their solar gods with those of the Dravidians.
material field. This work is being conducted at oxford in the De
Vishnu is a greatly beloved god and quite unlike the murderous
la Warr laboratories and its exponents claim that all growing
Siva.
things are built into a kind of 'blue-print' already exisli.rg
Vishnu is remarkable for his incarnations. He sleeps for long "rI
formed by_ a network of intersecting rays. The Hindu yogi have
periods in some kind of watery heaven and appears at intervals
reported that after death, on the next level of existenie, human
on earth in a variety of forms known as avatars. He crossed the
beings can obtain anything they need from the 'blue-prints',
Universe in three gigantic strides, thrusting the king of the
which are everywhere around them. The correspondence be-
demons, Bali, into the underworld at the third steP. We here
tween these ideas derived by very different metliods, the one
see a repetition once again of the Michael and Lucifer, Nuada and
mechanical and scientific, the other what might be described as
Balor, Indra and Vritra theme. Since the name of Balor or Bali is
psychic, is very remarkable and obviously requires a great deal
common to two of the stories and Balor, or Baal, was clearly a
of study._we seem'to be being pr"r"nted in very difiirent ages
sun god before he was relegated to the status of demon, albeit a
and in different parts of the world with a religious theory which
very honest and kindly one, we seem to have one story all over
is essentially the same and which appears to be the product of
the ancient world representing the replacement of one concep-
something carried by the human mind under abnormal conditions.
tion of the sun god by a later and rather more educated one.
It does not appear to correspond in any way with the theories of
Vishnu appears perhaps as the latest conception of one sun god
orthodox science, which have themselves reached a kind of
replacing another. His wife, Lakshmi, was born from the churn-
impasse in which nobody quite knows what is thought and what
ing of the sea, which curious act was performed by both gods and
is matter. Neither does it seem to agree with current theories of
demons together. She is a gentle, loving and beautiful goddess,
psychology.
who may be compared with Venus and perhaps the Dorak
Isis.
r The exponents of all these ideas, whether scientific or reli-
giotrs, claim to be able to do things which are not possible by
Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu, born in human form, who is
ordinary application of the human mind and body. They work
credited with a most remarkable philosophical poem, which
magic, or miracle, which ever you like to call it, by the use of a
142
r+3
little studied force, which De la Warr tefms 'resonanc"''.fuy: forgotten. Confidence in the use of this force was the 'faith'
oo" *irhing to study the claims put forya1d fot Fi* st-udy
should which the disciples foundit so hard to retain.
i.ra Ory ,ia De la W arr, New Worlds Beyond the Atom. and The witches maintain that their nudity is necessary to the
This ir"y ,."m.a far cry froy the witches and their rites generation of the force which th.y are seeking, the power to
a""".r, Uui it is not. Thi; is the clue to what th.y w3re,witch
3n$
work miracles. Since the force has not been studied, we cannot
say whether this is true or not. It is, however, interesting to see
pr"rr*"urv still are, trying to do. To understand the
;;iigi;;, ii is nec"*"ry io h-"r. a working knowledge of these that, in the newly published Gospel of St. Thomas, one of the
othlr *utt"rr. Whether they are colTect or not is no concern of sayings of Jesus can be interpreted in this way. 'Jesus said:
When you take off your clothing without being ashamed, ild
ours in this Particular studY'
take your clothes and put them under your feet as the little chil-
The witcf,es, in their vangelo, claimed to believe in Aradia,
*ho was the daughter of their two great- deities, Diana and dren and tread on them, then [shall you behold] the Son of the
Lucifer. She correJponds to the I{rishni of the Hindu and
would Living [e.] and you shall not fear.' Whatever the validity of
* avatar. Jesus Christ to Hindus is also an the belief may be, it is also held by numbers of holy men in India
U. torro*r, to him
"t
;;;;, that is the descent to earth of a god in human form. If I and, according to Pliny, was practised in Britain in his day. Pliny
copect\, this is considered stated that British women went to their religious ceremonies
u"a.rrt*d the De la Warr theories
the ray patterns naked and painted black.
a possibility in his subject also. He has plotted
"numb.r of tbjects, animate, and inanimate, and con- Apparently the belief that power could be obtained by itup-
of'" fr.ge
ping up the current in human bodies is very old indeed. The stone
,ia"r, tli"t thuy form a double spiral. He claims that a being on a
circles, which are usually thought to be temples of some kind,
high;, i;vel oi existence, whose entity was compg:"d o{ a much
or?ater number of intersecting rays than anything foul{ o1 are more probably places where violent dancing in a ring took
!"r,f,, ."rfJ descend the spirafto i lower level. Presumably it place to engender power, much in the same way as in electricity
a moving coil generates power. The stones were probably put
could also return uP the spiral again'
The powers protnised ily Ariaia to her devotees are either there with the idea of containing the power once it had been
generated. The idea of generating this power was, in the first
ones connected with ,.ro:r*.", finding treasure- (dowsing),
case, to compel the sun and moon to continue to bring the
rr.airrg diseases and making-ug-ly ge.ople beautiful (use-of the
.Box,i o, are related to suchlaculties as telepa$y ,"1 d".r:- seasons. This, I think, is the reason at the back of the witches'
,oy*|", whose existence has already be_en proved by scientific ring dances. Any orgiastic practices .which resulted were due
limited investigation of not to the ceremony itself, but to the general excitement which
mJthods. As I said before, I have made a

;;;;td myself and know that it is a fit srrhject for scientific it caused; although in themselves they would not have seemed
,tudy, irn"" scientists have educated themselves far enough
to wrong to the priests in charge, for they would be thought
phenomenon' obviously to encourage fertility by sympathetic magic. Once you
realize that it is not a bogus
Resonance appears to b-e akin both toelectricityandmagnetism.
have mastered the secret of controlling the power of resonance,
to it by.a of course, the promise of Aradia to the witches that they would
How",o"r, it wili not work without some impulse-given
in like a wireless set. This be able to bless or curse with it follows naturally.
human body and this has to be tuned
yet unstudied force in the I am not saying that the Witches could necessarily produce any
;;;;rpp"r."r tft. existence of some and- magnetism, whi$ pts
as
power at all; but the sadhus of India not only believe that they
ilffiLdy, akin both to electricity is power to .move people and objects; th"y believe
like a self-starter on a car. It is to ipeed up this force which 1 can produce

th. oUj..tive of both witches Td Tigicians. ft was presumably that, when th"y are really skilled, th"y can reduce their body at
th; *;y to handle this force which was taug[ UV J::.Y: ::,h]t will to its component atoms, transport these to a distant place
air"ipf,Jr and which now seems;o have been
either neglbcted or and reassemble them there. The stories of witches flying through
t46
 supplied a means for putting offthis promised event for as long
keyholes are presumably due- to their having entertained as possible. And so intelligent people were naturally dualists. It
Si*itur beliefs.'W. t"tnember that Je_sus taught his disciples the would not be till long after the fall of Constantinople and the
same thing. If they had enough faith they could order a mountain release all over the world of more exact information that men
to be remived ani cast into the sea and this would be done' It would begin to wonder whether all this fuss was necessary. It
is clear also that the early disciples believed that Ananias and was the new learning, I think, which killed the witches far
Sapphira were killed by this means. The same belief was quicker than any persecution could have done. Religions seem to
held by the early Hebrews, for Moses, in a competition thrive on persecution; but you can hardly expect them to do so
"rid..rtly
which he won against thepriests of Egypt, is said to have turned well on remarks of this kind: 'I say, old man, what do you think
sticks into snak-es. Jesus iurned water into wine in the manner you are doing up in the woods, dancing around with all those
promised to the witches. naked girls?' 'Making the sun turn round the earth of course.'
' Th" witches then had many things in common with other 1But, old chap, hasn't anyone told you yet that it's the earth
religions and what they believed was not n-ecessarily of. a which goes round the sun?' This astronomical discovery proved
prifiitive order. It may be said of it that their religion cannot be very disconcerting to the Christian Church; but it was absolutely
accepted by orthodox science, but what religion can? devastating to the witches'faith. Its popular reason for existence
I am noi advocating that readers should immediately- attempt had gone, and its devotees had to fall back on local matters and
to join if such a thilS exists. .[ am only trying
-rho*some local "orirr, attempts to plan with the Lord of the Underworld for their future
to that innumerable ancestors of the existing population of lives. The coven at some place tried to raise a storm and did not
western Europe were not such wicked, gullible and ignorant do it-a woman must not whistle, or she might magic up a wind,
fools as their acceptance of witch beliefs might seem to imply' which the men did not.want. The witches at another place tried
Edward III, in the eyes of my old pen friend, the late Colonel A' to kill somebody they disliked. It all became rather trivial,
Burne, author of Tie Crecy War, was one of the ablest soldiers hardly worth being burnt for. It must have been a little difficult
ever to command Engliih armies and yet he, according to to decide what was the best use for the power if they did generate
Murgu."t Murray, fotilded an order of chivalry consisting of it.
two iovens. At least 5O,OOO people are said to be descended from This is, I think, the real reason why we do not know of many
Edward III. All these 5O,OOO people are also descended from witches today. The Church need not take any credit for stamping
Robert the Devil. That is only one line through which witch them out, which it did with the utmost brutality. The credit, if it
blood descends. What about the other members of these two is credit, goes to men like Copernicus.
covens and all the other covens all over the count.fl Th:l" .T
scarcely be a soul in the country who has not some of it in him' It
is only reasonable therefore to try_ lo see what there was in it
*fri"n their imagination. I feel certain that it had little
or nothing to do with eitrticism. Was it not that nobody was
"uptured
quite ,rri in those duy: when telescopes were unknown, that
tlh" ,,rn and moot *ould continue to appear in the sky if they
stopped encouraging them to do so? It would have been calami-
tour if the sun *oot had ceased to revolve round the good
"id
flat earth. There would have been nothing at all to eat. As far as
I can recall, nothing was suggested in Christian doctrine about
this important matler, except that at the end the sun would be
turned into darkness and thi moon into blood. The witch ritual r47
t46
 they would still see her in the sky. The person she had obviously
gone to see was the Lord of that place underneath. She would
not go to see anyone down there of lesser importance. The dead
obviously went there too. You did not see them any more. They
were all down there and the Lord of the Underworld ruled them.
Chapter Eleven From these ideas came such beliefs as that in Tanit's visit to the
Lord of the Underworld. An extension of the idea accounted for
the alternation of summer and winter. The moon was still in the
sky, but when winter came somebody must have gone. This
\ TO\M that we have collected as much information as is easily somebody would be the Great Mother's daughter no doubt. A
l\ fou.rd about this religion, the time has come to see what Pluto and Proserpina type of myth came into being.
kind of one it seems to have been. For one thing it is evident that The modern witch belief, however, seems to belong to an
it was a composite affair. It was not a single revelation by any earlier phase than that and it is the Great Mother herself who
means. goes as mistress to the Lord of the Underworld.
As I see it, there was a world-wide belief in a Great Mother Three different beliefs then circulated in the ancient world and
and this necessitated a Great Father also. But there were parts of each of them became included in the religion of the
several father candidates available, two of whom were of equal witches. Just as the popular gods of India are more or less
importance. The first of these, as soon as the Great Mother, pre- served by the Brahmins, so presumably the popular gods would
sumably on account of her observed relationship-to the P-assage have been served by the Druidic priesthood. They held a far
of the ,Lrrorrr, was equated with the moon, was the sun. It must higher set of ideas themselves; but since the ordinary population
have been a little difficult to explain why he was so much paid for their support and their own belief was exremely hard to
brighter than the moon; but a convenient answer was that she present to simple minds, they saw to it that the older deities
prJduced him in the night, in the same *"y t[l children of men were not left out in the cold. Something of the Druidic belief in
*a *i-als appeared. There you have the Diana and Lucifer transmigration has survived in the modern witch cult. I do not
relationship, Iiaal and Ashtoreth, Dagda and Macha, or what- know whether they believe in rebirth in animal form; but their
ever you like to call thern. certainly believe in reincarnation. The greater part of they
Tli" ,."ond candidate had been conceived in the womb of the ritual appears to be focused on attempting to persuade the
Palaeolithic caves. She was the Great Mother of all living things goddess's lover in the underworld to see that they are reborn in
and he was the god of the beasts on which mankind supported pleasing circumstances.
itself after they f,ad been born. As time went on his realm came It seems to me to be impossible to substantiate an Old Stone
to include the vegetable kingdom also. He was god gf the forest, Age origin for the witch cult as a whole. It is a medley of
god of the beastf in it and io or; while she was still the Great beliefs, which originated in different places. There may be a
fuother, Mother Earth. This is the germ of the Diana and Pan suggestion, drawn from several small carvings, that there was
an idea in Palaeolithic times which might later develop into the
love story.
But a if,ira candidate callle into being to explain the moon's worship of the Great Mother, but the idea seems to be weak. On
absence every month. She had gone lway on a visit and could not
the other hand, there is a body of evidence to suggest that a
be seen. Where had she got As the world was flat and lit by fully developed belief in this Great Mother was of great anti-
"? quity in the Near East. How far back in time this belief origi-
the sun, she had gone outif sight under it, where it must be dark
because the eartf, stopped the light from getting underneath.it.
nated is unknown; but it would be reasonable to guess that it
was not less than five thousand years ago.
The moon had go.r" to visit somebody down there,. otherwise
148 149
 carried entirely by seamen and passed from port to port the
The belief seems to have come into Britain in several waves, whole way round from the eastern Mediterranean. It was here
of which the first hint is in the Neolithic Ag", perhaps around in Bronze Age times, for a wooden model of a boat, with gold
25OO n.c. The evidence is much clearer in the Beaker period, sun discs on the sides, from Caergwyle in Wales, probably dates
probably some 7OO years later, when cup marks on stones in about 14OO s.c. and these sun discs are characteristically asso-
Stottish stone circlei apparently represent the Y91i symbol of ciated with the ship pictures of the Bronze Age in southern
the goddess. [n the suiceeding- Bronze Ag", which may have Scandinavia. This boat has Isis's eyes on the bows. We have,
seen"the immigration of t"'u"riI peoples, the- religion evidently however, no .evidence that this Isis idea was absorbed into the
became widesfread and stone circles, for the performance of witch religion. Isis is the same Great Mother, with her ten
magic-producing dances, are found all over much of the land thousand names; but the witches may have had no truck with
rigfit up ,o the lslands in the north. We may perhaps conclude seamen. There is not the slightest hint that anything to do with
tfr?t *u.h of the south of Britain was under the sway of one boats was ever to be found in their ritual. I prefer to think that
great matriarchal ruler, who had trade relations with countries seamen were too sensible to believe that they could have any
it gr""t distances away. Crete and Spain, Palestine and trgypt effect on the behaviour of the sun and moon by dancing in the
doiot appear to have been utterly unknown.lands in l4OO r.c. nude on the poop. To them the elements wer" ioo closelt hand
These dates seem now to be subjeit to a possible eror of nearly for more to be done than humbly beg for safety and success. Yet
a thousand years. as it is fishermen who keep alive ceitain ceremonies linking the
After a ciimatic deterioration in north-western Europe, about Great Mother and horses, we cannot be sure that they did
?OO years later, another movement
began from the Continent to
not share in the beliefs of the landsmen. All cultivation of the soil
Britain. It seems probable that by 4oo s.c. a second large wave remained in the hands of Breton women for a long time and the
of Mother Goddlss worshipping Celts was becoTi.g fi1mly husbands would probably have to take their part in obtaining
established in England. TheJe w"te reinforced by
the^immigra-
fertility for man and beast. In the West Country of Britain cus-
iio., of Gaulish ci'arioteers some two hundred years afterwards.
toms iid not differ greatly from those of Briianny. Classical
These I take to be the immigrants whose ideas on matriarchy
writers recall the existence of island priestesses, who worked
them the people
;;;; dr."dy shaken. We sholld perhapt-:.: as
gods were
oracles for the men of the sea, suggesting that matriarchal ideas
to *no* Lugh, Nuada and the mbt" sophisticated -of obtained for a long time among seamen, even if surviving
sreater importance than the primitive concepts of Balor' Dagdl'
marine superstitions did not tell the same story.
whose immi-
6""r, M"lf,a, Magog and ihe rest. The Belgae, seem to have Magic was the great object to be obtained through the witch
g.u1io" began aboit i hundred years later still, ritual and their way to obtain it was by the simple expedient of
5.".,
- entirelY Patriarchal' working up mass excitement. Their aims and the promises given
it is improtable that we can form pan any opinion as to which to them by their avatar do not appear to have differed greatly
gr;il of immigrants introduced the concept; but one of
from those of most pagan beliefs and their ritual feasts were com-
Green, Robin Hoods
ifr"* must hu.'u."dore so, since Jacks in the in trngland'
mon to many including Christianity and Mithraism. The resem-
and other forms of the Celtic Esus are very
common
blance between their feast and the Christian one is so close as to
appears to
when we remember that practically no literature
un-
suggest a common origin for both.
have survived from pre-Roman England and how relatively
of Taken as a whole then the witch cult, the worship of I)iana,
can see that most
certain the story told by archaeology is,^we was by no means the simple survival of a very primitive religion.
We
our reconstruct-ion is no more thin informed- guesswork'
It was one which gathered ideas round it like a snowball. What
thousand years, of
have no idea, within a thousand, or even two remains of it is obviously the palest ghost of the thing it once
Mother Goddess around
the date of the arrival of the Isis type of was. Its enemies have clearly made the most of the opportunities
of population,
our coasts. It may have come witliout any change
15r
150
given to them in the trials to blacken it more than it need have the Ulster story were 'nobles' right enough. Surely the picture
6".r, blackened. It would not have seemed in the least out of of Cuchulain driving shouting at the men of Connacht, alone
place in Rome, where doubtless it was perfectly well known. lts with Laeg, his red-headed charioteer, and the straining horses,
ii*r and beliefs were quite reasonable until it was persecuted. is about as dramatic an illustration of the Aryan noble as anyone
Then, of course, its devotees felt justified in turning to such could wish. It is far better than anything India or Persia can
black magic as they were capable of working aglin_st their produce. Now that Sir Cyril Fox has reconstructed the chariots,
enemies. We do not hear much of their success. Kipling ex- put enamelled brooches on their horse blankets and great
pressed the whole thing perfectly Y!." he wrote: 'Oh, do not phalloi on their poles; when we have seen their spears and long
ietl the priest our plight, or he would call it a sin; but we have slashing swords ourselves, we can appreciate the men of the
been o,ri in the woods all night a conjuring summer in.'That is Celtic Iron Age as nobody has been able to do for two thousand
what they tried to do. There seems to be no reason why we years. Like Caesar long ago, we can grasp something of the wild
should think unkindly of them. excitement of it all. All the strands have to be collected, and
Perhaps the most interesting thing which comes out of this \troven once again into their pattern, before the old world, with
investigation is the obvious parallel, drawn not once, but its weird beliefs and strangely beautiful art, its heroes and its
s.r"r"l times, between the beliefs of western Europe and those gods, leaps at us from out of the mists of Time. Oh, I know Lord
of India. The scholars of the last generation saw this more Raglan has suggested that Cuchulain was nothing but an idol,
clearly than people do today. I am thinking in particular of the but what of thati This is how the Irish warriors behaved, or no
late Sir Flinders Petrie, who suggested that the link was through bard could ever have described it.
the movements of the Aryans. The term Aryan is under a cloud Although, as we have, I hope, seen, the Aryan part in this
nowadays, which seems rather unfortunate, for it denoted a real story is clear, we must not forget the Scythians of the Plains.
migrating race of conquerors. It is generally thought that the They are probably responsible for the great part played by the
Aryans, a word which means 'noble', came from southern veneration of the horse in the ancient story of western Europe.
Ruisia and then gave their name 'Iran' to Persia, before They do not appear to have used the war chariot; but they cer-
emerging on the plains of lndia. This maybe so; but I doubt it. I tainly had wagons. Their sacrificial customs seem to have been
think the Aryans came from hill country, because their calendar adopted both by the Celtic peoples and the Aryan invaders of
appears to have been based on movemelts up from valleys into India. Herodotus tells us that their kings claimed descent from
the hi[s, for the summer months, and back again. I should be gods, who he identifies with Zeus and Hestia. Although it seems
more ready to look for their origins at the foothills of some improbable that his identification was correct, for Zeus is in-
mountain mass. It could be the Caucasus, of Course, or it timately connected with the oak forests and Hestia with the
could be Asia Minor. Their language when they reached domestic hearth of settled life. The Scythians were nomads.
Persia was almost the same as the Vedic tongue of early India. Nevertheless the horse's head ornaments which begin to appear
Some regard it as the ancestor of most of the tongues of western in the Late Bronze Age of western Europe, and the innumerable
Europe. horses'heads which are found on the brooches of pagan Anglo-
If we are right in thinking that waves of migrations spread Saxon England, were probably derived from contacts with the
out from a common centre and reached western Europe as well Scythians. They owe nothing to the classical world. The late
as India, it explains the similarity in the names and characteris- Professor Bury was of the opinion that the Anglo-Saxons, who
tics of Celtic and Indian gods. It explains also why Ireland was came into Britain in late Roman times, were east German tribes
known as Eire, or something closely resembling it, at least three and not the descendants of those tribes known to Tacitus and
hundred years before the birth of Christ. Ireland, just as much as other classical writers. I do not think that this view is necessarily
Iran, or Eran, was a land of the Aryans. I like this. The men of correct, for I can see many pointers, particularly in their potter]r
152 r5s
to an origin in North Germany and Denmark; but if it is partially
nothing to eat. Better that some of them should be sacrificed for
the good of everybody they thought, and they were willing to do
correct, then contact with Scythia is easily explained.
It will be many years before problems of this kind are com- it. Then suddenly, like one of the Cailleach's own thunderbolts, it
was learnt beyond any possibility of doubt that it was all in vain.
pletely solved; largely because so few archaeologists in Britain
can be bothered to tackle so difficult a subject. The earlier The whole idea was wrong. The earth went round the sun and
periods of prehistory are relatively easy; there are few contacts the moon round the earth. How could anyone believe in the
with other lands. As time goes on, however, the study becomes magic any more? The moon was a tuppeny-ha'penny little thing
and the sun unapproachable. No wonder the remnant of believers,
increasingly complicated, with seaborne influences coming in
from all directions. I have only seen two books on Scythian art who clung grimly to their old beliefs, concentrated on a Lord of
the Underworld. Who knew? He might still exist.
and archaeology produced in Britain in the last generation. How
can we study this matter till more is done?
One thing seems to me to stand out clearly from all we have
attempted to investigate in this book. The witch religion, the
Dianic Cult if you like, was compounded from several different
beliefs. It was added to through the ages to such an extent that it
is now difficult to sort them into their component parts. How-
ever it was not just one belief out of many. It was the only real
belief of the people as a whole, generation after generation, from
the Early Bronze Age to the coming of Christianity. Even after
this, it remained as a substratum until improved knowledge of
astronomy and geography showed men that their ideas of the
functions of sun and moon were not like those which their
religion had been designed to influence.
All ritual in every religion is a form of magic. It is performed
in an attempt to persuade some god or other to do something for
the people concerned. For thousands of years the peoples of
most of the world performed a ritual for one main purpose.
They wished to persuade the moon and sun to continue their
work of ensuring the fertility of man, beast and field. For this the
sun and moon had to be badgered into returning in their courses
round the earth, so that summer and winter did not cease; seed
time nor harvest fail. The stone rings on our hills and the wild
dances of the witches were all designed for this great puipose.
All over the ancient world it was the same. The magic power
was generated, or so it was thought, by these dances, and it was
kept in and directed to its object by the stone circles, which were
put there so that the power should not drift away and be lost in
the countryside. Men and women were persecuted and burnt for
doing what seemed to them to be an entirely necessary action. If
they stopped, the seasons would not return. There would be
r54 r55
 Index

Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), 9, 139 Badb, The, t8, 88, 96, ll8, 19,3
Andrastea, 79 Bali (India), 7Q,73, 142
Andrew, 5O,51, 69, 8rl, 87. Fig. Balor, see Baal
I Barddas (Triads), 29, 196, 135,
Animal, change to, lo, 17,24 196
Animal worship, sea Totem Baubo, 88
Annu, Annis, 60,77, 96,97, lO4 Beaker Men, 58, 59,61, l5o
Anthropology, ix, l, 95, ll7 Bear, 21r 22,39
Anthropomorphism, sea Gods in Beelzebub, 9,45,46, 56, 58, 59,
Human Form 63,78, 95, lO4
Apollo, 20, 34,35,46 Bellona, 22,23,24
Apostles, 16, 19, 21,22 Benevento, 7, 42
Apple of Life, 99, 94 Bhagavad-gita, t4,9
Aradia, 61 71 8,9, 14, 15, 16, 18, Black Annis, sea Annu
35,66, 133, 144, 145 Black Death, t t
Archaeology, ix, l, 9, 5, ll7, 128 Black Dogs etc., see Hell Hounds
Arianrod, 7 Black Mass, I
Armstrong, Rev. A. C., 25,40,99 Boadicea, 78,79, lo7
Artemis, I9, 19, 90, 21, 22, 28, Boar, Pig, Sow, lo5, lo7, lo9,
92, 34, 36, 74, 75, 91, lO5, I lo, I 12, ll3, ll4
to6, r23. Fig. t(b) Brahma, lO, 59, 61r 95, 136, 198,
Artio, 82 l40.
Aryans, 91, 57, 77, I15, 137, Branscombe, ix, 46,70., Fig. 8
lg8, lg9, l4o, l4l, 142, 159., Breasts, Multiple, 74,75,88, 94,
r5g I le. Figs. r(b), 2(b)
Ashtoreth, e2, 56, 61, 126, I48 Brigantes, 78, 80, 81, 97, lO5
Avatar, 14, 133, 149. Brigid, 47, 80, 8s, 87, 9t, 9+, 96,
97, lO4, lO5
Baal, Belenus, etc., $5, 36, 46, 56, Bronze Ag", 58, 61, 77, l18, 127,
67, 59,60, 61, 63, 64, 72, 78, l5l, 154
85,94,95, lO8, 19;6, 136, 142, Buddha, 3, 14, l3O, 133, l4'O
14.8, l5O Bull, sea Ox
r57
Caesar, Julius, 28, 44, ll5, lg5, Dammonii, lo5, 106, log Feast, Sacred, 7, 8, lo, I l, 146 Head Hunters, see New Guinea
186, t53 Danann, Tuatha d6,97, lo5, lo8 Female Rule, 34, 35 Hecate, 19, 2Or 26, gq
Cailleach, lg, Gz, G7,96,97, toi, Dance, 8, lO, llr 43, 154 Fertility, 12, 22, 25, 40, 43, 61, Helith, Hele, etc., see Hercules
106, I 12, ll3, I 14, ll5, I 19, Danu, 19, 60, 88, 96, lO5, 123 75, 95,96, I lq,, 154 Hell Hounds, 67-9, 7 l, 72
123, 125, 126, 155 Demeter, 261 32 Fish, etc., lO5, 115, I 19, 125 Hengist and Horsa, 92, 93
Cain, 7 Devil, g, lo, 17,45, 56,62,64, Folklore, ix, l, 3, 25, 51,9C.,95, Heraldry, 25, 106-9, l16, ll7,
Cakes, sea Feast 78,99, ll0, lqz, 123, 139 tt3, tt7 122, 124
Caledonii, l05, Iod Devon, 51, 681 71r 72, 86 Fomor, Giants, 97,98 Hercules, Helith, s5, s6, 44, 57,
Canna, ll9, l2O. Fig. l5 Diana, 7-lO, 19, 16, 17, 19, 20, Foretelling, etc., 7, 8 63, 64, 69, 94, 95, 198. Fig.
Carthage, 59 22, 29, 3O, 84, 361 45, 46, 54, Fox, Sir Cyril, 58, 85,89, t5g s(r)
Cartimandua, 78-81 60, 61, 66, 71, 74, 75, 86, 92, Frithelstock, 71, 86 Hiccafrith, 9q, 95
Cat, 8, 25, lO5-7, ll3,125 95, 97, lO4, lO5, llo, ll5, Hill Fort, saa Dun
Caves, 40,41r 45 ll9, 122, l2g, 129, 14,8, l5I, Galatae, Galatia, 81, 57 Hindu, 9, lO, 50, lg3, lg7, l4O,
Celt, Celtic, 19, 31, 9M,46, 51, r54 Galley, see Ship r43
54, 57,58, 61, 64,65, 67,99, Diarmid, Dermot, sae Mabon Gardner, Dr. G. 8., 3, 29, Q7, 66 Hippogamy, s€e Horse Marriage
loo, lo5, 106, I lo, I 15, ll7, Disease, cure of, 8, l5 Garter, Order of, to, 12 Hiram, 35, 36
I 18, l2O, 123, 126, lg0, 196, Disguise, lO, 17, 24, 9,6, 39,48. Gaul, ge, g5r 4qr 45,8s, loo, I lg, History, ix, x, I l7
t'o, t5$ Fig. e(b) ll6 History, religious, x
Ceres, l9r qA,66 Dog, 9, lo, 67-70,llo,122, 123. Goat, I 14 Honey, sea Feast
Cerne Giant, Helith, sae Hercules Fig. 8 Godiva, t 19 Horns, 94, 86,4Qr 44r 49, 59, 61,
Cernunnus, Cernunnos, 94-6, 41, Donegal, 99,, t\g Gods in Animal Form, 92 64, t}l, 124. Fig. 3,4
44, 65, I14,, I t5. Fig. S(a) Dorak, tz7, tqe. Fig. ll Gods in Human Form, 22, 27, 8o, Horse, lO, 25, 9,6, 3q,,461 79, 89,
Chariot, ll5, 116, ll8, 158, 158 Dowsing, 14, 15 6l 9Or 92r 93, 94, 96, 97, lO5, lO7,
Charm on Pots, lOI, lO9, I lO, Dragon, 47, 138, lgg Gog, etc., 88, 89, lo4 llo, l15, 116, ll8, l19, 123,
II l, I14, 122. Fig. t* Dravidian, 187, 138, l4l, 149- Gospel (Christian), Q, 9, t45 139, l4O
Chastity, 21,22 Dressing up, su Disguise Gospel (Vangelo), (Witch) , 2, 6, Horse Marriage, g2, tl8, 139,
Chatti, Cattubellauni, l05, I 06, I I g Druids, 18r 28,29,8O, 59,61,72, lo, 17, 35, 45, 47, 59, 72, 75, 1.4,o
Christ, Jesus, 4, 14, 16, 56, l2O, 96, l2o, l9o, ls4, 195,.186, 97, t33,143 Horse Sacrifice, 92, ll8, 139
193, l4O, 146,152 143, 149 Graves, Robert, 25,76, 82 Hu, the Mighty, 69,61, l4o
Christianity, see Church Christian Dun, Hill fort, 46, 52, 53, 55, Great Father, 17, 27, 42, 60, 61,
Church, Christian, I l-19, 16, 18, 60, g.4, g5, lo8, I lg. Fig. 6, 9 75,76,95, l4l, 148 Iceni, '18, 79, 8a, ge, 94, 95, 97,
49, 71, lol, lo2, l3o, 137, Durga, 76,77, 95, 96, 138, I4O Great Mother, 17, 21, 22, 27, 41, lod
t47, t5l 42, 46, 6O, 61, 66, 67, 73, lndia, Indian, 26, 29, 81, 57,77,
Clan Chattan, lO6, I l8 Eagle, lo7 7+-6,81-9, 85, 87,88, 94-6, 78,86,92r 95, 186, 137, 138,
Club, 95, 96, 67,6e,69,95 Egypt, 19, 22, 23, 24, 26, 79 loI, lo5, lo7, I lo, I12, ll8, t4o, 152
Colchis, 126, lq7 Elva, 46, 122 122, 123,124, lS8, l4O,148, Indra, 77,126,198, 139, l4o, l4g
Council of Trent, lo2 Ephesus, 19,20,21,22 149, l50, l5l Ireland, Irish, 18, lg, 27,45, 55,
Coven,3, 1O,64 Epidii, 79, 97, tos Greek, lg-qz, q7, 3rr 44, 58, rqo, 65,68,80, gO, 92,96,98, 99,
Cow, see Ox Epona, 32, 92, t t6. Fig. e(a) 127, t86 loo, 106, lta, ll5, ll8, lLs,
Cremation, 58 Eskimo, 37, 38,42 Group Soul, tgl, tTq, 133 138, l4l, 152
Cwmry, 59, 126 Esus, lO2, lO4, I lO, 116, l5O Iron, use of, 58, 59
Etruscan (Tuscan), 6, 9 Hades, sae Underworld Ishtar, see Ashtoreth
Dagda, 57,60,63, 68, 94,95,96, Hare, 7Or 7l, lO5, 122, 123. Fig, Isis, t 8r 22r 28, g6,l05, I 15, 124,
lo8, 138, 148, t5o Familiar, \Aritches, t23 8 125, l5o, t5t. Fig. t6
158 159
Italy, 6, 9, 19, 28, 122 Mercury,44 Persia, 9, 139, 152 Serpent, 35, 47, lo7, IO8, ll4,
Michael, +7, 5M, 64, 65, 87, Phallic, see Fertility lq,o, 19,5
James, E. O., 7+ I19, I38, 139, 142. Fig. 5 Picts, 81, lo7, I lO, I13, ll4, l2O Sheila-na-Gig, 84, 85, 87,88, 93,
Mind, Universal, lo, l3l, l4o Pig, see Boar os. Fig. to
Joan of Arc, l3
Johnson, R. C., tso Minns, Sir Ellis, 118 Plantagenet,4T Ships, Boats, 22, 34, lol, ll5,
Zeus Mithras, Mitra, 9, 122, 126, 138, Pluto, 20, 27, 44, 62, 66, t+9 124, 125, 126, 127. Fig. 16
Jupiter, see
139, l4O, l5l Pope Gregory, 18, 47, 49, 50, 54, Shony, te6
Kali, 67, 76,77, 95, 96, ls8, 14,o, Moon, 7, 2O, 22, 34, 49r 79, 82, 50 Siva, 57,67,77,86,95, 136, 198,
t+t. Fig. 7(a) 87,95, l04, l05, lO9,l24,l4O, Proserpina, 19, 22, 24, 27,44, 66, l4o, l4l, t+e. Fig. 7(b)
Kendrick, Sir Thomas, 135 l5l 149 Sollas, W'. J.,37
Krishna, 4, 14, 133, 142, 143 Mother Goddess, see Great Protestant, lO2, lA3 Solomon, 54, 57
Mother Proto-Celt, 58, 59, to9, tq6 Sons of the Sea, lo8
Lakshmi, t+e Mother Rule, saa Matriarchy Psychical Research, tgo, l9l, l4g Speech, Celtic, 58, 59,62
Leland, C., s,6, 8, g, lo, lg, 19 Murray, Dr. Margaret, 2, 3, 6, 9, Ptolemy, to5-7 Springs, 54'

Licence (S"*), 7, 8, to, ll, t7, lo, 13, 26,41,42, +7,49r 74, Purvati, 95 Stag, 19, 34, 89,40,49, ta5-7,
lol 78, 86, 139,146 Pwyll, 67,68,7t lo9, lll
Lochlannach, lo8 Myres, F. W. H., l3o, l3l, l3g, Pythagoras, 28,29, 135 Stallion, see Horse
Lough Erne, 99, loo. Fig. ts t35, 143 Sun, Sun God, eo, 49, 5g, 87,
Lugh, Ludd, 45,46, 5o, 53, 54, Queen of Heaven, 22, 27, 44, lO4 95, lO9, I lO, I 12, ll4, l5l
59, 60, 65, 68, 99, lO8, I 19, Names, Difficulty ofl 18, t9 Sun Symbol, 47, 69,70. Fig. 5,
122, 138, l5O Nero, 16 Ram, 34, ll9, 122 8

Lucifer, 7, 8, lO, 18, 17, 35, 36, Nerthus, 54, Raven,46

45r 46,47, 5+, 56, 59,60, 66, New Guinea, 3o,31 Reincarnation, So, I28 Tacitus, 28, 79, lO5, 124, 126,
85,92,95, lO4, 134, 189, 142 l.{ine Maidens, 89, lo4. Religion (General), t, g, 4, 19, 153
Nodens, sae Nud l8r 28r 96, 50, 56, lO8, 128 Tana (Diana), 7, g, t9,59, 60
Mabon (Maponus), Dermot, 46, Nud, Nuada, Nod, 65, 68, 71,99, Religion (witch), sae Witchcult Tanit, lg, 59,60, l4g
47, 5A, 59, 54,59,87r 94,96, lO8, 112, 142, l5O. Fig. t3(b) Resonance, 144, 145 Taranis, 44, lO2, llo
99, I12. Fig. l3 Nudity, etc.,7,8, 16, 17,145 Revelation, Book of, tg, to Telepathy, 14
Mace, see Club Richard Il, tt, tQ Teutates, 44, lO2, llo
Macha, 19,62,94, lO4, lO5, lo8, Oak, loz, lo4, I 16 Richmond, Ian, 99 Thirteen, Group of, to
14.8,l50 Ogham, 35,57 Robert the Devil , 69, 87, t46 Thunderbolt, g7, l98, 155
Magic, 7, 9, 1?., 14, 15, 16, 9,6, Ogmius, 35, 36, 44, 57, 99 Rome, Roman Empire, 7, 13, 16, Transmigration, 129
28, 39, 41, 48, 49, 75, l4S, Orcades, lo5 18, 19, 22r 23r 24r 28, $5r 44, Treasure, Hidden, I
145, t5+ Ox, Cow, Bull, to, 22r 84, lo5-7, 61,70,78-81, 83, 89, lOO, lOl, Trees, 54, lo2, lO4
Magog, Mag, etc., 84, 88, 89, l9o, 122, 125 ll2, ll3, l16 Triads, sea Barddas
g+,95,96, lO4, ll9, 128, 127, Rudra, l4l Trial, witch, 9-ll, 44,99
r5o. Fig. z(b), e Padstow, I 19 Trinity, Pagan, lO2, lO9, I lo.
Mahadevi, 86, 96, l4,l Palaeolithic, 27, 9o, 37, 38, 41, Sacrifice ( Human), I t, eg, 77 , 87 , Fig. t+
Maiden, I lo 43, 444, 74, ll8, 149. Fig. r27 Totem, x, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 39,
Male Rule, 34, 35 3(b) Salt, see Feast 4r, 92, t t6. Fig. t(a)
Mari Llwyd, t te Pan,26, 344, 41, 44, 54, 66, 99, Scotland, Scots, 19, 27, 97, 98,
Matriarchy to Patriarchy, change, I lo, I16, I19, 199, 148 lo5, I 12, l2o, 126, 142 Underworld, 20, zg, 94, 97, 4q,
?8, 80, 81, I12, ll5 Peasants' Revolt, l38l' ll Scythians, l17, ll8, 153, 154 45, 62, 66, 67, 72, llo, 147,
May, Day, etc.,lo2,lo4, l lo, I l9 Persephone, see Proserpina Seasonal Changes, 24. 149, 155
160 l6l
Valkyries, 83 Wat Tyler, see Peasants' Revolt
Vangelo, Gospel (Witch)
sea Wheeler, Sir M., 67, 8l
Varuna, 126, 138, 139, l4O Whittlesford, 83-6, 87, 88, 89
Veddas, 137, l4l, 142, 152 William, Duke, 62, 87. Fig. 5, I
Venus, 22, 142 William, Rufus, 87
Vishnu, 72, 142 Wine, see Feast
Witch Cult, e, 3, 5, 7, to, 24, e6,
Wales, Welsh, eg,46, 57,65,67, 35r 41,61r 74, ll9
ll2, l19, 134,136, 138 Wolf, too
Wandlebury, 84, 85, 88, 89, 91,
92,93,94, l19, l27.Fig. s, tz Zeus, 19, lO2, 138, 153
Water Divining, sea Dowsing Zoroaster,4, 9

t62