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The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World
Peter Stump: In 1590, Peter Stump was arrested in Cologne and charged as a werewolf for a series of murders, including that of his own son, which had occurred over a 20-year period. On March 31, 1590, Stump was executed as a werewolf. An illustrated pamphlet was published detailing Stump’s career as a werewolf. The pamphlet was translated into different languages and was a bestseller of its time.
Jean Grenier: In the spring of 1613, children began mysteriously disappearing in the St Sever district of Gascony, France, including a baby from its cradle. An aura of fear pervaded the area. Other children began to report unusual occurrences. Finally 13-year-old Marguerite Poirier reported that while tending cattle, a huge, ferocious canine with reddish fur and a short, stumpy tail jumped from the bushes and attacked her. Marguerite fought it off with an iron-tipped staff. (This may be understood as a clue to the beast’s supernatural identity. If this were really a wolf, a child with a club wouldn’t stand much of a chance; iron is feared by virtually all supernatural beings. It breaks virtually every spell and offers spiritualmagical protection.)
Rumors soon spread that Jean Grenier, aged approximately 13 or 14, was boasting of attacking Marguerite. He claimed that if it hadn’t been for that iron-tipped staff, he would have killed and eaten her as he did others. Grenier, the son of an impoverished laborer, traveled about seeking work with local farmers. He never lasted long at any job, usually being fired for neglecting his duties. Whether he was uneducated or mildly retarded is unknown, but it was noted during his trial that he had the mental capacity of a much younger child. When unable to find work, he begged.
Soon 18-year-old Jeanne Gaboriaut came forward and testified under oath that while she and some other girls had been tending cows, their sheep dogs began to growl and whine at something. The girls investigated and discovered a filthy, red-haired, feral boy with a unibrow. Jeanne asked him why he looked so strange. According to her, he responded, “Because sometimes I wear a wolf’s skin.” The puzzled and intrigued girls asked him to explain. He claimed that a man named Pierre Labourat gave him a wolf skin that, when donned, enabled him to transform into a wolf and hunt. He boasted that he killed and ate many dogs but that these weren’t as tasty as children. The girls fled to the authorities.
A search was made for the boy who was soon found and arrested. Jean Grenier claimed to come from the village of Saint’Antoine de Pizon. His father beat him so he ran away, earning a living as a cowherd and beggar. About three years earlier (this would have been when he was about 10) another boy took him into the woods to meet the Lord of the Forest, who turned out to be a tall man, dressed in black, riding a black horse. Jean met him several times and agreed to serve him. Jean described the children he’d killed and eaten. Witnesses came forward to corroborate his story. The court pronounced him a werewolf and sentenced him to life imprisonment in a monastery.
Grenier is unusual in werewolf-lore because virtually all other convicted European werewolves were burned to death, in the manner of witches. In Grenier’s case however, the Chief of the Court made a speech suggesting that questions of witchcraft and diabolism should be disregarded. Instead the court should consider the boy’s age and mental capacity.
Thiess, the Livonian Werewolf: In 1692, in Jurgensburg, Livonia, an 80-year-old man named Thiess was interrogated. Thiess had long been under suspicion; local Christians considered him an idolater. He allegedly killed small livestock in wolf form although he cooked the meat, not eating it raw.
Thiess perplexed and frustrated his inquisitors. Yes, he confessed to being a werewolf but insisted that he was a holy werewolf, a benevolent one, a werewolf of God. Furthermore, he wasn’t alone: he belonged to a werewolf society. According to Thiess, members of this society went to Hell and back three times a year to fight the devil and his sorcerer minions. (The three nights were St John’s Eve, St Lucy’s Night, and Pentecost.) Thiess initially told his interrogators that Hell was at the “end of the sea.” After further questioning, Thiess amended this to the more conventional “underground.” He claimed there were male and female werewolves but specified women, not young girls. Thiess called werewolves “the dogs of God.” He claimed there were also German werewolves but that they fight in a different hell. The werewolves fought with iron whips. The sorcerers were armed with broomsticks wrapped in horsetails. They fought for the fertility of barley and rye fields as well as the sea’s bounty of fish. Sorcerers stole shoots of grain; if the werewolves couldn’t get them back, there would be famine.
The inquisitors had wanted a standardized werewolf/witchcraft/heresy trial; instead they had stumbled upon a magical shamanic scenario. Exactly what fate befell the aged Thiess is unknown.
Some context may be needed to truly appreciate the Livonian werewolf: Today Livonia is in southern Latvia but in 1692, Livonia was a Baltic province of Russia, bordered on the north by Estonia and on the east by Lake Peipus. It was a true crossroads area, with various ethnic groups present including a high proportion of Swedes.
Pockets of old religion are believed to have survived as well as a shamanic tradition that may have merged with Christianity, thus creating a kind of “double-faith.” Latvian werewolves belonged to the society of the Hairy Martinians, which may be understood as a male witch society. They roamed on certain nights, especially Midsummer’s Eve, to drive away the demons of infertility. They gathered at full moons and at New Year in the forest. Islands in the Latvian River Brasla were among their favorite meeting places.
Count Jean Potocki: The Polish count Jean Potocki was born in 1761. A writer, traveler, and diplomat serving Tsar Alexander I, Potocki traveled widely in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, where he claimed to have flirted with various secret societies. Considered among the founding fathers of ethnology, Potocki was also an early Egyptologist. His claims to fame include his death and his mysterious novel, which was published posthumously. Chapters of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa were published beginning in 1797, however the novel was still incomplete at the time of Potocki’s death almost 20 years later. Sections of the original text were lost; however, a version remains in print, including an English translation. The book is a complex series of intertwining stories featuring a cast of characters including Gypsies, a Kabala master, Moorish princesses, and assorted members of secret societies. It has been compared to The Arabian Nights.
In 1815, Potocki committed suicide using a silver bullet from a melted-down samovar, allegedly convinced that he was a werewolf.
Books of Magic and Witchcraft
Scholars and anthropologists suggest that the need to record rituals, formulas, prophecies, spells and their results may have stimulated the creation of writing. Among the earliest surviving writings from many lands, languages, and scripts are divination results and recommended magic rituals.
(Documents pertaining to taxation are also heavily, if less romantically, represented in these early texts.)
Some acknowledgement of this history may be found in myths revealing the identity of the first book. Inevitably it’s a book of magic spells. In ancient Egypt, Thoth was believed to have authored the first book, the eponymous “Book of Thoth.” It allegedly contained various spells, rituals, and names of power. Names of power were words so powerful that if uttered correctly (and you had to pronounce them just right!) virtually anything was in your grasp: spirits would be summoned to accomplish your every desire.
The ancient Jews knew similar legends although they had a different first book: the angel Raziel, witnessing the expulsion from Paradise, felt sorry for Adam and secretly slipped him this book engraved on a sapphire tablet. Raziel knew that without a guide to spells, rituals, amulets, and talismans life would be much more difficult, painful, and joyless. Jewish mystical tradition names this book after the angel, The Book of Raziel.
The neighboring Samaritans had an almost identical legend, although they called their first book, “The Book of Signs.” And according to Etruscan traditions in ancient Italy, their ancestors were plowing a brand-new field when a strange figure emerged from out of the Earth, with the head and body of a handsome young man but possessing snakes for legs. This sacred being identified himself as Tages and he, too, bore a book of spells, rituals, and mysticism that he gave to the Etruscans along with verbal instructions. It was upon these materials that the Etruscans claimed to have founded their great magical, oracular, and spiritual traditions.
It isn’t all legend. We know that the classical Greek magicians wrote handbooks that integrated spells, rituals, and instructions for creating amulets, magical tools, and curse tablets.
Books have been used to teach witchcraft, encompassing spiritual traditions and magical arts. They’ve been used to store and preserve information; they’ve also been used as magical tools, as sacred objects of power.
Historically magical books have not represented the diverse realities of witchcraft. Women’s magic, folk magic, Earth magic has traditionally been transmitted orally. Until very recently, what was found in books, with very few exceptions, consisted largely of ceremonial or high ritual magic. Perhaps because of the literacy factor, ceremonial magic was considered the province of adepts, while folk magic (“kitchen magic”) was considered foolishness and superstition, even among occultists. This situation has changed drastically today—the pendulum may even have swung in the opposite direction—but only since the 1970s.
Because so few magical books survive and so many unknown manuscripts were destroyed it’s impossible to know whether this split between male and female magic was always the case. The stereotype suggests that only men were literate but that’s also misleading: once upon a time, few men could read either.
What you won’t find in this section:
This stereotype of literate male magicians conducting high ritual in some tower while female witches played in the dirt below may be nothing more than stereotype, however: approximately thirty years before the Common Era, the Roman poet Horace wrote about exclusively female witches and their power to draw down the moon. He described them as devotees of Diana and Proserpina who celebrated in secret nocturnal ceremonies. According to Horace, these witches, too, had a book, the Libros Carminum, the “Book of Charms” or Incantations.
Before the invention of the printing press, making a book was an extremely laborious, time-consuming process. Everything was done by hand, one copy at a time. Very frequently only one copy of a book ever existed so when a book was lost, it was gone for ever. Each book was unique, just as each person is unique—parallels that were not forgotten when books were burned, neither by those who destroyed them nor by those who loved or valued them.
Printing was revolutionary; it changed everything. Printing is the process of making multiple copies of a document by the use of moveable characters or letters. The process was developed independently in both China and Europe. Printing made it possible to make more copies in a few weeks than would have been possible in a lifetime by hand. Johann Gutenberg began building a printing press in 1436 although it took him until approximately 1450 to perfect the process. Although the number of books expanded exponentially there were not nearly as many publications as there are today: your choices were very limited, so what existed was very influential.
Quite a few of those early books, a fairly substantial percentage, had to do with magic and witchcraft, one way or another. Among the earliest and most widely distributed publications were witch-hunters’ manuals, guides for trial judges, Inquisitors and witch-finders. For years, the world’s second most popular bestseller, second only to the Bible, was the Malleus Maleficarum, “The Hammer of the Witches.” Although witches have always been eyed with suspicion by authority and various levels of persecution certainly pre-dated the printing press, perhaps without its invention such massive witch-hunts would not have happened.
On the other hand, simultaneously printing presses were used to bring magic traditions, albeit sometimes incredibly convoluted traditions, to more people than ever before. At great tremendous personal risk, printed grimoires, books of ritual magic, began to appear in Europe. They may be understood as an act of brave defiance against censorship and against the witch-hunts.
In 1951, the last law against witchcraft in the United Kingdom was repealed; this opened the floodgates of a new phenomenon: the witch as author. Gerald Gardner is credited with authoring the first factual book about witchcraft written by a self-identified practitioner. Witchcraft Today was published in 1954. (See HALL OF FAME: Gerald Gardner.)
Many people now learn magic, witchcraft, and Wicca from literary sources rather than from other people. (In many cases this is the only option.) Once upon a time, every town and village had at least one wise woman or cunning man with whom you could consult. That opportunity doesn’t exist anymore and so books and authors have stepped in to fill the void.
Almanacs
Almanacs, defined as books, typically published annually, containing useful, practical advice and information, are most familiar today as standard reference books, similar to encyclopedias or dictionaries. Although some are little more than a compilation of tables of information, many are extremely entertaining. In addition to the “useful, practical information” many almanacs also include proverbs and sayings, little stories, humor, recipes, and assorted odd factoids and miscellany.
However, these extras are the icing on the cake: almanacs are filled with information intended to help one plan one’s daily schedule and one’s work schedule, especially if you still subscribe to a “traditional” occupation like farming, hunting, fishing or seafaring. The typical contents of an almanac include farming and planting information, tide tables, tables of sunrises and sunsets, weather forecasts and ephemeredes (the fancy, technical word for astrological tables). Astrology? In a standard reference book? Yes, because the earliest almanacs were books of magic.
The modern English word almanac is believed to derive from the medieval Latin almanach, which most likely derives from the Arabic al-manAkh, meaning “an almanac.” Another theory suggests that almanac actually derives from the Saxon al-mon-aght, the name given to Norse runic clogs, carved wooden sticks detailing a year’s progression.
Almanacs have extremely ancient roots; they derive from what is known as a hemerology. Hemerologies are magical calendars listing predictions for each day. What does each day mean? What blessings does each day promise or, conversely, for what inherent dangers must one prepare? Which deities or forces possess their utmost power on this day? Intrinsic to the hemerology is the notion that there is such a thing as lucky or unlucky days. Hemerologies thus serve as a guideline for avoiding disaster and maximizing good fortune.
Hemerologies list favorable and unfavorable days within each month; positive and negative actions for each day are also listed. Hemerologies existed in places as far apart as China, Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, Mexico, and Rome.
The earliest known hemerology dates back to at least the second millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. Hemerologies typically include predictions like this:
Daily horoscopes published in newspapers derive from this concept. Among the Aztecs and Mayans, when a baby was born, the hemerological table was consulted in order to reveal the new child’s nahual, patron deity and perhaps name (see ANIMALS: Nahual).
With the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, almanacs, which were cheap to produce, became widely circulated and influential. Many people had only two books in their home, the Bible and an almanac. Scholars began producing their own almanacs, among the most renowned being Michel de Nostre Dame, better known now as Nostradamus. His predictions were first published as a feature within the almanacs he wrote, compiled, and published annually beginning in 1550. English astrologer William Lilly published his own almanacs in the seventeenth century.
By the eighteenth century, almanacs had become an extremely popular literary genre; many were bestsellers. Benjamin Franklin published his Poor Richard’s Almanac from 1732 to 1758. Benjamin Banneker, the African-American astronomer and mathematician also published a series of best-selling almanacs. The Old Farmer’s Almanac, first published in 1792, is North America’s oldest continually published periodical. The Old Farmer’s Almanac was originally a guide for farmers and remains so, although many readers who have nothing to do with agriculture, simply enjoy reading it or depend upon its renowned weather predictions. The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s weather and farming advice are based on astrological wisdom, particularly moon phases. For many, these books are their only exposure to true astrology.
The Witches’ Almanac
Another popular publication, The Witches’ Almanac, falls squarely within the tradition of almanacs as books of magic. In addition to the standard practical information one expects to find within an almanac (moon phases, planting tables, and so forth) The Witches’ Almanac is filled with information regarding spells, spirits, and practical magic. The Witches’ Almanac was created by Elizabeth Pepper and John Wilcock and was first published as a labor of love in 1971. It is published annually coinciding with the vernal equinox. In 1980, when their publisher went out of business, The Witches Almanac went on hiatus until 1991 when Pepper and Wilcock revived it as an independent publication. It continues to serve all facets of the witchcraft community.
Books of Shadows
According to its most basic definition, a Book of Shadows is a book of spells or rituals copied by hand. That’s crucial; by definition, a Book of Shadows is a personalized, hand-written book. No two are identical, if only because the handwriting is different. Although various authors have published their personal Books of Shadows, these are usually intended as guidelines or methods of preserving traditions. If you use a printed, published Book of Shadows for spellcasting, which many do, then by definition it is being used in the manner of a grimoire. In order to possess an authentic Book of Shadows it must be hand-written, even if all you do is copy it word for word. A not insubstantial portion of the tradition’s power and beauty derives from the magical art of putting pen to paper.
Books of Shadows derive from the notion that because magical practices and/or pagan religion were persecuted with total eradication as the goal, witches (variously defined) kept secret books. Secrecy was crucial because possession of a magical or pagan text (and that’s a distinction the Inquisition would not have made) was grounds for arrest and conviction for witchcraft. The title of the genre, which may or may not have been coined by Gerald Gardner, father of modern Wicca, refers to the necessity of keeping these books hidden or “in the shadows.”
If one uses the purest, narrowest definition of a Book of Shadows as a hand-written, personalized book of rituals and magic, then in essence, all magical manuscripts created prior to the invention of the printing press, not least the medieval grimoires, are Books of Shadows. They were, by necessity, hand-copied. There was no other way to make a book.
However, that pure, narrow definition of Books of Shadows is rarely used, and the equation of them with medieval grimoires would horrify, appall and anger many Wiccans, because a Book of Shadows is more than just a handwritten ritual guide.
Many would object to considering medieval grimoires as Books of Shadows because these grimoires are virtually all associated with a type of selfish, frequently malevolent, male-oriented sorcery, heavily steeped in Christianity (many who used and perhaps wrote them were theologians) and with a type of magic that is diametrically opposed to traditional Earth-centered witchcraft.
Historic Books of Shadows, as opposed to those created in the wake of Gerald Gardner, are understood to have been books written by individual female witches or by covens in a desperate attempt to keep traditions alive. They are shadowy because normally this material would never have been written down but transmitted orally—but desperate times require desperate action.
This is the definition of Books of Shadows as taught by Gerald Gardner, who claimed to have learned of the tradition when he was initiated into a long-secret coven. Gardner wrote his own Book of Shadows together with Doreen Valiente and Aleister Crowley, and this book is among the bedrock on which Gardnerian Wicca is formed.
Since Gardner, Books of Shadows are an integral part ofWiccan religion, manifesting in various ways.
In this sense Books of Shadows transcend spells. They are books of ritual. If one belongs to a specific spiritual or witchcraft tradition, this sacred book is where the laws, rituals, spells, and crucial information of that tradition are written.
