Margaret Murray
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Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963) was a prominent British anthropologist and Egyptologist. She was well known in academic circles for scholarly contributions to Egyptology and the study of folklore which led to the theory of a pan-European, pre-Christian pagan religion that revolved around the Horned God.
Her ideas are acknowledged to have significantly influenced the emergence of Wicca and reconstructionist neopagan religions. However, Margaret Murray's reputation as a witchcraft scholar was criticized by most historians because of her demonstrated tendency to subjectively interpret or otherwise manipulate evidence to conform to the theory.
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[edit] Biography
Margaret Murray was born in Calcutta, India on July 13, 1863. She attended the University College of London and was a student of linguistics and anthropology. She was also a pioneer campaigner for women's rights. Margaret Murray accompanied the renowned Egyptologist Sir William Flinders Petrie, on several archaeological excavations in Egypt and Palestine during the late 1890s. Her work and association with Petrie helped secure employment at University College as a junior lecturer. Murray's best known and most controversial text, "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe," was published in 1921. She was consequently named Assistant Professor of Egyptology at the University College of London in 1924, a post she held until her retirement in 1935. In 1926, she became a fellow of Britain's Royal Anthropological Institute. Murray became President of the Folklore Society in 1953. Ten years later and having reached 100 years of age, Margaret Murray published her final work, an autobiography entitled "My First Hundred Years" (1963). She died later that same year of natural causes.
[edit] Murray's Witchcraft theories
Murray's "Witch Cult in Western Europe" 1921, written during a period she was unable to do field work in Egypt, laid out the essential elements of her thesis that a standardised underground pagan resistance to the Christian Church existed across Europe. The pagans organized in covens of thirteen worshippers, dedicated to a male god. Murray maintained that pagan beliefs and religion dating from the neolithic through the medieval period, secretly practised human sacrifice until exposed by the witchhunt craze starting c. 1450. Despite the bloody nature of the cult Murray described, it was also attractive for its views on the importance of freedom for women, its open sexuality and its resistance to Church oppression. Murray's ideas may be attributed to the popularity of the conservative concept of a romanticised rural Deep England in reaction to modernism and the horrors of the First World War.
Murray's theories were critiqued by historians of witchcraft like C. L. Ewen, who called them "vapid balderdash".[citation needed] Since academic reviews were published in obscure journals, critical analysis of Murray's work often failed to influence the reception of her books. It is generally agreed that Murray's ideas, though well expressed, were the result of misinterpretation and exaggeration of limited evidence taken from unconfirmed sources. Murray was also accused of falsification of some documents. The classic view of her theories, prioritising examples of her selective quoting of texts to support her thesis, can be found in Norman Cohn's book, Europe's Inner Demons. No historian or scholar has ever challenged Cohn's conclusions. Notable historians who agree in their rejection of Murray's ideas include Ronald Hutton, G. L. Kitteredge, Keith Thomas, and many others. Professor J. B. Russell's evaluation summarises their position:
"Modern historical scholarship rejects the Murray thesis with all its variants. Scholars have gone too far in their retreat from Murray, since many fragments of pagan religion do certainly appear in medieval witchcraft. But the fact remains that the Murray thesis on the whole is untenable. The argument for the survival of any coherent fertility cult from antiquity through the Middle Ages into the present is riddled with fallacies."
[edit] Criticism of Murray's theories
Murray's original ideas were heavily influenced by the ideas of the anthropologist Sir James Frazer, who, in The Golden Bough, detailed his proposal of a world-wide belief of a sacred king who was sacrificed. Frazer's ideas, in this regard, have not stood the test of time, and modern anthropologists generally reject his conclusions of widespread "Sacred Kingship" and his ideas about death and rebirth gods.
Murray's sources in general were limited: "a few well-known works by Continental demonologists, a few tracts printed in England and quite a number of published records of Scottish witch trials. The much greater amount of unpublished evidence was absolutely ignored." (Hutton 1991)
One example of Murray's questionable methodology is in her concept of covens with thirteen members: She cited one Scottish reference out of thousands of witch trials, and in searching for other thirteen-member covens, she excluded, accused or added individuals until a total of thirteen was reached for any given group. For example, of those indicted at the Aberdeen witch trials in 1597, twenty-four were burnt as witches and another seven banished. Murray listed only twenty-six of the accused to make two of her covens. Of the fourteen people accused at St Osyth of witchcraft (Robbins 425), two were hanged. Murray, however, lists only thirteen individuals to make a coven. (Witchcult Appendix III)
She also abstracted sources to suit her own ends. Her quotes of accused testimony emphasised the prosaic detail of descriptions, while omitting more fantastic elements: she omitted lines where the supposed witches said they flew to the meetings, or transformed into animals, or reported the devil disappearing and reappearing suddenly. According to Kitteredge and other historians, the European obsession of the sabbat hardly featured in witchcraft trials in England, yet Murray claimed it was universal.
Murray proposed an effective underground resistance movement to the medieval Church, but some note this seems unlikely, as its political hegemony was so profound. The Church worldview was so established as to leave virtually no room for another set of ideas, so its principles were completely taken for granted. Evidence from the medieval period shows the smallest heretical sects were found and crushed. That Murray's proposed secret Europe-wide cult could survive unnoticed until the mid-fifteenth century seems improbable.
Perhaps most doubtfully, Murray decided that the evidence given in witchhunt trials, evidence often given under torture or threat of torture, was accurate, because its consistency seemed to her to be evidence of the coherent belief system she proposed. In all probability, however, Inquisitors asked leading questions until they got the answers they wanted, so that they could execute or condemn the accused. The coherent system she found was partially that of the Satanic witchcraft defined in books like Malleus Maleficarum, which insisted that witches conducted human sacrifice and sexual orgies, accusations with which Murray partially agreed. In English trials she particularly favoured using accounts from those trials conducted by Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, where the evidence given was extracted by dubious means and was very distorted.
[edit] Later writings
Murray's later books were written for a more popular audience and in a style that was far more imaginative and entertaining than standard academic works. "The God of the Witches", 1931 expanded on her claims that the witch cult had worshiped a Horned God whose origins went back to prehistory. Murray decided that the witches' admissions in trial that they worshiped Satan proved they actually did worship such a god. Thus, according to Murray, reports of Satan actually represented pagan gatherings with their priest wearing a horned helmet to represent their Horned God. It is not surprising then that Murray's supposed Witch Cult did not focus on a Goddess, unlike modern Wicca. Murray also discussed the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, claiming to show that he too was a pagan: "The death of Thomas à Becket presents many features which are explicable only by the theory that he also was the substitute for a Divine King" (Murray 171).
Murray now became more and more emotional in her defence of her ideas, claiming that anyone who opposed her did so out of religious prejudice. In "The Divine King in England", 1954 she expanded on her earlier claims there was a secret conspiracy of pagans amongst the English nobility, the same English nobility who provided the leading members of the Church. The suspicious death of William Rufus, King of England, was a ritual sacrificial killing of a sacred king carried out by Henry I, a man so pious he later founded one of the biggest Abbeys in England. This secret conspiracy, according to her, had killed many early English sovereigns, through to James I in the early seventeenth century. Saint Joan of Arc - whose Catholic piety and orthodoxy are attested in numerous documents (such as the letter she dictated threatening to lead a crusade against the Hussites), and who was executed by the English for what even the tribunal members later admitted were political reasons - was rewritten as a pagan martyr by Murray. Her portrait of messianic (self-) sacrifices of these figures make for entertaining speculation, but they have not been taken seriously as history even by her staunchest supporters, though they have been used in novels.
[edit] The influence of Murray's thesis on modern academic thought
In a more sympathetic reading, a considerable patchwork of surviving Pagan ideas can be seen throughout European history, and Murray's work did much to alert attention to this previously concealed history of European religion. Isolated individuals or groups certainly did practice customs and rituals that were not part of ordinary Christian dogma, as signs of such beliefs can be seen in Church architecture and local legends. However, such practitioners typically saw themselves as Christian. It is also difficult to clearly define what constitutes a "pagan" belief, since folklore about spirits, fairies etc, continued to exist in Christian cultures.
There have been some academics who, while admitting that Murray exaggerated and falsified evidence[citation needed], have been influenced by her ideas. Most important of these was Carlo Ginzburg, who discovered in Inquisition records hereditary groups of magicians, called benandanti in early modern Italy, whom he believed showed signs of being the descendants of ancient fertility religions. These groups actually saw themselves as the enemies of witches. For Ginzburg they were folkloric memories of Indo-European shamanism. However, the most important elements of Murray's thesis remain rejected. There was no universal pagan cult throughout Christian Europe. There are possible survivals in local elements of Pagan traditions within medieval life, and some Pagan deities may have been transformed into Christian saints or seen as fairies and other similar beings.
[edit] The legacy of her thinking
Much like modern popular books on conspiracy theories Murray's sensational works were to become popular bestsellers from the 1940s onwards and were generally believed to be true. Indeed, Murray's influence is still massive in popular thought, though, as noted above, academics have since cited major flaws in Murray's works which call her conclusions into question.
Jacqueline Simpson blames contemporary historians for doing little to refute Murray's ideas at the time they were written. It has been claimed that in the thirties her books led to the founding of Murrayite covens (small circles of witches), one of which probably taught Gerald Gardner in the 1940s. Gardner went on from this introduction to become one of the founders of Wicca, an influential stem for contemporary neopaganism. The affectionate phrase "the Old Religion", used by Pagans to describe an ancestral Pagan religion, derives from Murrayite theory, although many increasingly recognise that "the Old Religions" (plural) would be more accurate. Other Wiccan terms and concepts like coven, esbat, the Wiccan calendar Wheel of the Year, and the Horned God are clearly influenced by or derived directly from Murray's works. Murray's inaccurate ideas are also partially responsible for influencing believers in an ancient European matriarchy and an exaggerated version of the witchhunts which some feminists and neopagans believe in (see also Burning Times). Her ideas also inspired other writers, varying from horror authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Dennis Wheatley to Robert Graves. The character of the obsessed academic Rose Lorimer in Angus Wilson's 1956 novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is said to have been inspired in part by Murray and Frances Yates.
Despite the historical inaccuracy of her ideas, Murray's legacy is impressive. There may not have been a secret underground pagan cult in the Middle Ages, but there is an open neopagan religion in the modern world, which is a tribute to her inspirational and imaginative writing.
[edit] References
- Cohn, Norman, Europe's Inner Demons, London: Pimlico, 1973.
- Ewen, Cecil L'Estrange Ewen. Some Witchcraft Criticism, 1938.
- Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1991.
- Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Kitteredge, G. L. Witchcraft in Old and New England, 1951. pp. 275, 421, 565,
- Russell, J. B. A History of Witchcraft, Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans, Thames and Hudson, 1995 reprint.
- Simpson, Jacqueline. "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why?", Folklore 105, 1994, pp. 89–96.
- Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971 and 1997, pp. 514–517.
[edit] External links
[edit] Books
- The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (text in HTML format)
[edit] Criticism
- Article by historian Jenny Gibbons discussing the mainstream view of Murray's theories
- Another article by Gibbons which includes Murray's theories, as well as a general overview of the field
- "So how old is Witchcraft really? The role of Murray examined" by Dave Evans.
[edit] Bibliography
- Saqqara Mastabas (1904)
- Elementary Egyptian Grammar (1905)
- Elementary Coptic Grammar (1911)
- The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921)
- Excavations in Malta, vol. 1-3 (1923, 1925, 1929)
- Egyptian Sculpture (1930)
- Egyptian Temples (1931)
- Cambridge Excavations in Minorca, vol. 1-3 (1932, 1934, 1938)
- God of the Witches (1933)
- Petra, the rock city of Edom (1939)
- A Street in Petra (1940)
- The Splendour That Was Egypt (1949)
- The Divine King in England (1954)
- The Genesis of Religion (1963)
- My First Hundred Years (1963)
