I think most Wiccans today would agree that Wicca is a modern religion and not "the oldest religion in the world" as some have claimed. A lot of Wiccans today try to distance themselves from Aleister Crowley, an infamous magician, and deny the huge influence he had on our religion. To those who have studied Wicca in depth, it is obvious that Aleister Crowley's work is woven into our traditional rituals and poetry. We can also see hints of the ancient Mysteries of Greece and Rome, the ceremonial magick of the enlightenment, the traditions of British Cunning Folk, Hermeticism, and the medieval Grimoire tradition.
Professor Ronald Hutton's ground breaking title Triumph of the Moon helped unlock the closet of Wiccan history in 1999, revolutionising the way Wiccans and other neopagans saw the Modern Witchcraft Movement. The Wicca of the new milennium was a more self aware religion, sweeping the cobwebs away from old myths and fantasies to reveal an unashamed honesty. The prominent Wiccan Elder Frederic Lamond referred to Triumph of the Moon as "an authority on the history of Gardnerian Wicca" praising the scholarly technique of historical research.
To this day there are still unanswered questions about the mysterious New Forest Coven from which the Wiccan religion sprouted. We can see from Wiccan ritual that the New Forest Coven were familiar with the Key of Solomon, from which they drew heavily upon. They also seem to have used a number of other very important and much older grimoires. We know that the Wicca Rede has origins in the Thelemic Ode of Les aventures du roi Pausole published in 1901 by Pierre Louÿs and translated into English in 1929 by Charles Hope Lumley. In 1921 Dr Margaret Murray published The Witch-Cult in Western Europe followed by The God of the Witches in 1933. I am sure that these publications were the match sticks that sparked the flame of Wicca. The New Forest Coven seems to have formed in the 1930s as a direct response to Murray's publications.
Gerald Gardner openly stated that the New Forest Coven claimed to belong to a medieval tradition of magic. It is likely that their rituals were drawn straight from medieval grimoires. The historian Owen Davies noted, "while the [Christian] Church was ultimately successful in defeating pagan worship it never managed to demarcate clearly and maintain a line of practice between religious devotion and magic," and the use of magical manuals continued throughout the Middle Ages. Christians divided books of magic into two kinds; those that dealt with "natural magic" and those that dealt in "demonic magic". The former was acceptable, because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God, for instance the Anglo-Saxon leechbooks which contained simple spells designed for medicinal purposes were tolerated. However the latter, demonic magic was not acceptable, because it was believed that such magic did not come from God, but from the Devil and his demons - these grimoires dealt in such topics as necromancy, divination and demonology. Despite this, "there is ample evidence that the medieval clergy were the main practitioners of magic and therefore the owners, transcribers, and circulators of grimoires" says Davies.
The moorish occupation of Spain and the Crusades increased contact between the Christian and Muslim worlds in the Middle Ages, introducing Islamic magic to European grimoires. In particular, astral magic, involving the invocation of celestial bodies, was highly influential. The 12th century Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi'l-sihr, devoted to astral magic, was translated into Latin and circulated in Europe during the 13th century under the name of the Picatrix. The 13th century the Sworn Book of Honorius on the other hand was, like the ancient Testament of Solomon before it, largely based upon the supposed teachings of the Biblical king Solomon, and also included ideas such as prayers and a ritual circle, with the mystical purpose of having visions of God, Hell and Purgatory, and gaining much wisdom and knowledge as a result. Another was the Hebrew Sefer Raziel Ha-Malakh, translated in Europe as the Liber Razielis Archangeli.
During the 15th century another book claiming to have been authored by King Solomon was written in Greek and known as the Magical Treatise of Solomon or the Little Key of the Whole Art of Hygromancy, Found by Several Craftmen and by the Holy Prophet Solomon. In the 16th century this work had been translated into Latin and Italian, being renamed the Clavicula Salomonis or the Key of Solomon. Grimoires were given a sense of authenticity by being attributed to Biblical figures. The German Abbot Trithemius (1462-1516) supposedly had in his possession a Book of Simon the Magician, based upon the New Testament figure of Simon Magus. Grimoires were also attributed to figures such as the poet Virgil, astronomer Ptolemy and philosopher Aristotle. The false attribution of magical manuals to ancient authors was so common that the Fransiscan friar Roger Bacon stated that they "ought to be prohibited by law".
The advent of the printing press revolutionised the grimoire tradition, making magic more accessible to the masses. Amongst the earliest books to be printed were magical texts; the nóminas were one example of this, consisting of prayers to the saints used as talismans. It was particularly in Protestant countries such as England, Scotland, Switzerland and Germany, which were not under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church, where such grimoires were published. Despite the advent of print however, hand-written grimoires remained highly valued, as they were believed to contain inherent magical powers within them, and they continued to be produced. With increasing availability, the lower classes were able to access grimoires and integrate them into popular folk magic.
The Roman Catholic Inquisition organised the mass suppression of peoples and views that they considered heretical. In many cases, grimoires were found in the heretics' possessions and destroyed. In 1599, the Church published the Indexes of Prohibited Books in which many grimoires were listed as forbidden, including several mediaeval ones like the Key of Solomon which were still popular. The popularity of grimoires and the fear of heretical practices sparked a Witchcraft Craze in Protestant Europe. People found with grimoires, particularly of a demonological nature, were prosecuted as witches. In Iceland there was a high rate of literacy and most of the witches persecuted were men that owned grimoires.
In 18th century France a new form of printing developed, the Bibliothèque bleue, and many grimoires were published through this and circulated amongst an ever growing percentage of the populace, in particular the Grand Albert, the Petit Albert, the Grimoire du Pape Honorious and the Enchiridion Leonis Papae. The Petit Albert in particular contained a wide variety of different forms of magic, for instance dealing in both simple charms for ailments along with more complex things such as the instructions for making a Hand of Glory. Following the French Revolution of 1789, a hugely influential grimoire was published under the title of the Grand Grimoire, which was considered particularly powerful because it involved conjuring and making a pact with the Devil's chief minister, Lucifugé Rofocale, in order to gain wealth from him. A new version of this grimoire was later published under the title of the Dragon Rouge, and was available for sale in many Parisian bookstores. Similar books published in France at the time included the Black Pullet and the Grimoirium Verum. The Black Pullet, probably authored in late 18th century Rome or France, differs from the typical grimoires in that it does not claim to be a manuscript from antiquity but told by a man who was a member of Napoleon's armed forces that were sent to Egypt.
The widespread availability of such printed grimoires in France soon spread to neighbouring countries. In Switzerland, the city of Geneva was commonly associated with the occult as magicians from Roman Catholic countries flocked to Switzerland to purchase grimoires or study with occultists. Soon, grimoires appeared that involved Catholic saints within them; one such example that appeared during the 19th century which became relatively popular, particularly in Spain was the Libro de San Cipriano, or The Book of St Ciprian, which falsely claimed to date from circa 1000 CE.
There were many historians in 19th century Germany with an interest in magic and grimoires. Several published extracts of grimoires in their own books on the history of magic, thereby helping to further propagate them. Perhaps the most notable of these was the Protestant pastor Georg Conrad Horst, who from 1821 to 1826 published a six-volume collection of magical texts in which he studied them as a peculiarity of the Mediaeval mindset. Another scholar of the time interested in grimoires was the antiquarian bookseller Johann Scheible, who published the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, two influential magical texts that claimed to have been written by the ancient Jewish figure Moses. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were amongst the works that later spread to the countries of Scandinavia, where, in the Danish and Swedish languages, grimoires were known as 'black books' and were commonly found in the military.
In Britain, new grimoires continued to be produced throughout the 18th century, such as Ebenezer Sibly's A New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology, which became particularly popular with Cunning Folk. In the last decades of that century, London was experiencing a revival of interest in the occult, and this was only further propagated when Francis Barrett published The Magus in 1801. The Magus contained many things taken from older grimoires, particularly those of Cornelius Agrippa. One of Barrett's pupils, John Parkin, created his own handwritten grimoire, The Grand Oracle of Heaven, or, The Art of Divine Magic, although it was never actually published, largely because Britain at the time was at war with France, and grimoires were commonly associated with the French. The only writer to widely publish British grimoires in the early 19th century was Robert Cross Smith, who released The Philosophical Merlin in 1822 and The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century in 1825.
In the late 19th century, several grimoires, including the Abra-Melin text and the Key of Solomon, were reclaimed by para-Masonic magical organisations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis. Under the leadership of Aleister Crowley, O.T.O. was reorganized around the Law of Thelema as its central religious principles, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" and "Love is the law, love under will”, promulgated in 1904 with the writing of The Book of the Law. Gerald Gardner was recognised as the O.T.O's main representative in Europe until 1951 when he handed the role over to Frederic Mallinger. Gerald Gardner composed his own grimoire, drawing reference from Aleister Crowley's work and the grimoire tradition, which he called The Book of Shadows. Large portions of The Book of Shadows were made publically accessible, but it has never been published in full. What has been published of this grimoire inspired many independent covens to form, practicing their own version of Wicca. Today Wicca has become very diverse, with each coven or solitary individual composing their own Book of Shadows based loosely on Gardner's.
)O(
Professor Ronald Hutton's ground breaking title Triumph of the Moon helped unlock the closet of Wiccan history in 1999, revolutionising the way Wiccans and other neopagans saw the Modern Witchcraft Movement. The Wicca of the new milennium was a more self aware religion, sweeping the cobwebs away from old myths and fantasies to reveal an unashamed honesty. The prominent Wiccan Elder Frederic Lamond referred to Triumph of the Moon as "an authority on the history of Gardnerian Wicca" praising the scholarly technique of historical research.
To this day there are still unanswered questions about the mysterious New Forest Coven from which the Wiccan religion sprouted. We can see from Wiccan ritual that the New Forest Coven were familiar with the Key of Solomon, from which they drew heavily upon. They also seem to have used a number of other very important and much older grimoires. We know that the Wicca Rede has origins in the Thelemic Ode of Les aventures du roi Pausole published in 1901 by Pierre Louÿs and translated into English in 1929 by Charles Hope Lumley. In 1921 Dr Margaret Murray published The Witch-Cult in Western Europe followed by The God of the Witches in 1933. I am sure that these publications were the match sticks that sparked the flame of Wicca. The New Forest Coven seems to have formed in the 1930s as a direct response to Murray's publications.
Gerald Gardner openly stated that the New Forest Coven claimed to belong to a medieval tradition of magic. It is likely that their rituals were drawn straight from medieval grimoires. The historian Owen Davies noted, "while the [Christian] Church was ultimately successful in defeating pagan worship it never managed to demarcate clearly and maintain a line of practice between religious devotion and magic," and the use of magical manuals continued throughout the Middle Ages. Christians divided books of magic into two kinds; those that dealt with "natural magic" and those that dealt in "demonic magic". The former was acceptable, because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God, for instance the Anglo-Saxon leechbooks which contained simple spells designed for medicinal purposes were tolerated. However the latter, demonic magic was not acceptable, because it was believed that such magic did not come from God, but from the Devil and his demons - these grimoires dealt in such topics as necromancy, divination and demonology. Despite this, "there is ample evidence that the medieval clergy were the main practitioners of magic and therefore the owners, transcribers, and circulators of grimoires" says Davies.
The moorish occupation of Spain and the Crusades increased contact between the Christian and Muslim worlds in the Middle Ages, introducing Islamic magic to European grimoires. In particular, astral magic, involving the invocation of celestial bodies, was highly influential. The 12th century Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi'l-sihr, devoted to astral magic, was translated into Latin and circulated in Europe during the 13th century under the name of the Picatrix. The 13th century the Sworn Book of Honorius on the other hand was, like the ancient Testament of Solomon before it, largely based upon the supposed teachings of the Biblical king Solomon, and also included ideas such as prayers and a ritual circle, with the mystical purpose of having visions of God, Hell and Purgatory, and gaining much wisdom and knowledge as a result. Another was the Hebrew Sefer Raziel Ha-Malakh, translated in Europe as the Liber Razielis Archangeli.
During the 15th century another book claiming to have been authored by King Solomon was written in Greek and known as the Magical Treatise of Solomon or the Little Key of the Whole Art of Hygromancy, Found by Several Craftmen and by the Holy Prophet Solomon. In the 16th century this work had been translated into Latin and Italian, being renamed the Clavicula Salomonis or the Key of Solomon. Grimoires were given a sense of authenticity by being attributed to Biblical figures. The German Abbot Trithemius (1462-1516) supposedly had in his possession a Book of Simon the Magician, based upon the New Testament figure of Simon Magus. Grimoires were also attributed to figures such as the poet Virgil, astronomer Ptolemy and philosopher Aristotle. The false attribution of magical manuals to ancient authors was so common that the Fransiscan friar Roger Bacon stated that they "ought to be prohibited by law".
The advent of the printing press revolutionised the grimoire tradition, making magic more accessible to the masses. Amongst the earliest books to be printed were magical texts; the nóminas were one example of this, consisting of prayers to the saints used as talismans. It was particularly in Protestant countries such as England, Scotland, Switzerland and Germany, which were not under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church, where such grimoires were published. Despite the advent of print however, hand-written grimoires remained highly valued, as they were believed to contain inherent magical powers within them, and they continued to be produced. With increasing availability, the lower classes were able to access grimoires and integrate them into popular folk magic.
The Roman Catholic Inquisition organised the mass suppression of peoples and views that they considered heretical. In many cases, grimoires were found in the heretics' possessions and destroyed. In 1599, the Church published the Indexes of Prohibited Books in which many grimoires were listed as forbidden, including several mediaeval ones like the Key of Solomon which were still popular. The popularity of grimoires and the fear of heretical practices sparked a Witchcraft Craze in Protestant Europe. People found with grimoires, particularly of a demonological nature, were prosecuted as witches. In Iceland there was a high rate of literacy and most of the witches persecuted were men that owned grimoires.
In 18th century France a new form of printing developed, the Bibliothèque bleue, and many grimoires were published through this and circulated amongst an ever growing percentage of the populace, in particular the Grand Albert, the Petit Albert, the Grimoire du Pape Honorious and the Enchiridion Leonis Papae. The Petit Albert in particular contained a wide variety of different forms of magic, for instance dealing in both simple charms for ailments along with more complex things such as the instructions for making a Hand of Glory. Following the French Revolution of 1789, a hugely influential grimoire was published under the title of the Grand Grimoire, which was considered particularly powerful because it involved conjuring and making a pact with the Devil's chief minister, Lucifugé Rofocale, in order to gain wealth from him. A new version of this grimoire was later published under the title of the Dragon Rouge, and was available for sale in many Parisian bookstores. Similar books published in France at the time included the Black Pullet and the Grimoirium Verum. The Black Pullet, probably authored in late 18th century Rome or France, differs from the typical grimoires in that it does not claim to be a manuscript from antiquity but told by a man who was a member of Napoleon's armed forces that were sent to Egypt.
The widespread availability of such printed grimoires in France soon spread to neighbouring countries. In Switzerland, the city of Geneva was commonly associated with the occult as magicians from Roman Catholic countries flocked to Switzerland to purchase grimoires or study with occultists. Soon, grimoires appeared that involved Catholic saints within them; one such example that appeared during the 19th century which became relatively popular, particularly in Spain was the Libro de San Cipriano, or The Book of St Ciprian, which falsely claimed to date from circa 1000 CE.
There were many historians in 19th century Germany with an interest in magic and grimoires. Several published extracts of grimoires in their own books on the history of magic, thereby helping to further propagate them. Perhaps the most notable of these was the Protestant pastor Georg Conrad Horst, who from 1821 to 1826 published a six-volume collection of magical texts in which he studied them as a peculiarity of the Mediaeval mindset. Another scholar of the time interested in grimoires was the antiquarian bookseller Johann Scheible, who published the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, two influential magical texts that claimed to have been written by the ancient Jewish figure Moses. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were amongst the works that later spread to the countries of Scandinavia, where, in the Danish and Swedish languages, grimoires were known as 'black books' and were commonly found in the military.
In Britain, new grimoires continued to be produced throughout the 18th century, such as Ebenezer Sibly's A New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology, which became particularly popular with Cunning Folk. In the last decades of that century, London was experiencing a revival of interest in the occult, and this was only further propagated when Francis Barrett published The Magus in 1801. The Magus contained many things taken from older grimoires, particularly those of Cornelius Agrippa. One of Barrett's pupils, John Parkin, created his own handwritten grimoire, The Grand Oracle of Heaven, or, The Art of Divine Magic, although it was never actually published, largely because Britain at the time was at war with France, and grimoires were commonly associated with the French. The only writer to widely publish British grimoires in the early 19th century was Robert Cross Smith, who released The Philosophical Merlin in 1822 and The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century in 1825.
In the late 19th century, several grimoires, including the Abra-Melin text and the Key of Solomon, were reclaimed by para-Masonic magical organisations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis. Under the leadership of Aleister Crowley, O.T.O. was reorganized around the Law of Thelema as its central religious principles, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" and "Love is the law, love under will”, promulgated in 1904 with the writing of The Book of the Law. Gerald Gardner was recognised as the O.T.O's main representative in Europe until 1951 when he handed the role over to Frederic Mallinger. Gerald Gardner composed his own grimoire, drawing reference from Aleister Crowley's work and the grimoire tradition, which he called The Book of Shadows. Large portions of The Book of Shadows were made publically accessible, but it has never been published in full. What has been published of this grimoire inspired many independent covens to form, practicing their own version of Wicca. Today Wicca has become very diverse, with each coven or solitary individual composing their own Book of Shadows based loosely on Gardner's.
)O(
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