I’m a little surprised that no one has brought up the fact that “magick” could be said to be the original spelling of this word. Noah Webster campaigned for spelling changes in American English; one being the removal of a terminal “k” on many words that ended in “ck”. Read eighteenth-centry British literature - Samuel Johnson’s writings, for example - and you find it replete with “romantick”, “physick”, and “almanack”.
But in matters of language change, vox populi, vox Dei. Americans began to spell those words without the last “k”, and those became the standard spellings. If enough people began to spell “magic” as “magick”, that would become again the standard. That’s the way the linguistic ball bounces.
From Wicca: A Guide For The Solitary Practitioner Scott Cunningham p26-27 Llewellyn Publications, St Paul MN
The “k” was removed from such words as “public” and “magic” because there is no “k” in the underlying Latin, and the change occurred on both sides of the Atlantic.
As a rule, Wiccan claims about history can be dismissed out of hand. Wicca was invented in the 20th century, based on an article in the 1929 Encyclopedia Britannica that the Britannica has been apologizing for for over thirty years.
I guess we’ll just have to take your word on that.
[list=1]
[li]I’m not a proven bullshit artist.[/li][li]http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991029.html[/li][li]You can find the Encyclopedia Britannica in your local library.[/li][/list=1]
The point isn’t whether Wicca is a neo-religion. Even if it is, so what? Does that automatically refute the author’s perspective on the history of the broomstick? Apparently so, and since I’m a Deist and not Wiccan, I have no real investment in this or any need to defend it. I will consider myself enlightened on the subject but still skeptical about the authenticity of the idea of rubbing hallucinogenic oils on a broomstick and using it as a dildo to get high in ancient times. My intention was to offer another explanation by someone that up until tonight, I had no reason to doubt. Thanks for the link.
Indeed, that isn’t the point. The point is that, ever since Margaret Murray, Wiccan “history” has been made up of stuff that people pulled out of their asses. There are a few Wiccans who have done honest historic research, but, in general, anything said by a Wiccan about “old-time witches” is probably sheer fantasy, and should never be trusted without solid documentation to back it up.
But you seem to have missed what is most striking about that author’s perspective. Re-read what Cunningham says.
As a comment on the supposed witches/broomsticks link, this actually has much to be said for it. Cunningham does seem to appreciate that the evidence is all very shaky (although he may also be trying to hedge his bets).
The basic problem is that all anyone really knows is that anti-witchcraft writers began to link witches to broomsticks from the late fifteenth century onwards and that a handful of later courtroom testimonies in witchcraft cases also mention broomsticks. And that’s it. Everything else is just guessing.
That’s why John W.'s point is so important. Wiccans cannot claim any greater authority in answering such questions because there is now little doubt that any oral traditions they have don’t date back any further than the twentieth century. They are therefore not in any better position than anyone else to know whether historical witches used broomsticks and, if so, what for. They’re just guessing too.
I saw a show on PBS a few years ago that attributed the salem witch trials occurance to a hallucinagenic mold that grows on wheat.
They discovered this phenomenon recently in the same area. Then, after discovering the local weather had been the same during the trials, concluded that the people at the time had “visions” likely brought on by the LSD-similar chemical in the mold.
Sorry that I don’t have specifics here, someone please help 
I find the ergot theory quite plausible. The Salem episode was isolated, and took place long after the heyday of English witchhunts; and within a year the judges were apologizing and saying they didn’t know what had come over them. It won’t do as an explanation for the witch-mania of the Renaissance (or for the world-wide, age-old superstitions about witches in general), but it may well account for Salem.
Evil? Broomsticks? Someone once said that if the devil really existed, and if he were to take a tour of our world and saw the things people do to each other, he’d hand in his trident and go off to some corner of the universe and sulk. It’s really kind of funny how people do REALLY screwed up stuff and blame it on the devil. The truth is, Lucifer himself could never think up a truly sick idea that we humans haven’t… and you know what? We have things like electricity, power tools, automatic rifles, surgical implements and handcuffs…
I don’t find it plausible at all. How does it explain the jury’s behavior, or the judge’s behavior in sending the jury back for the right verdict? How does it explain the kids taking up their wailing at exactly the moments when it looked like a witch might go free? Ergot would have to be an intelligent drug to explain all of this.
In my opinion, we prefer these “drug” explanations because it is easier to believe that the witches truly did go to sabbat with the devil if only in their minds, or that the accusers truly did believe what they were saying, than it is to believe that humans can be capable of such acts.
But we know very well that people are capable of such acts. Even today, in the United States, we have public officials calling for death penalties for marijuana use (and sometimes even managing to institute it in a backhanded way). We don’t yet have forests of burning drug users outside of our city gates, but we do have unreliable tests that we trust implicitly; we have created a “justice” system that benefits from guilty verdicts; we have created a justice system that in many cases no longer needs a guilty verdict to confiscate an accused person’s property; and because “it is an indicium of witchcraft to defend witches,” we have even begun harassing lawyers that defend drug users, and confiscating their fees as well.
We don’t need ergot to explain an irrational justice system, nor do we need it to explain unreasoning hysteria.
Jerry
Not to impune your fine scholarly analysis of the Hebrew language, but you’ve sort of missed RiverRunner’s main error.
The passage in question does not refer to Christianity at all, since it appears in the Law of Moses. (Exodus 22:18, to be precise), and as such has nothing to do with “acting in a hostile manner towards loyal Christians”
It also ought to be noted that the Dead Sea scrolls, comprising, among other works, every book of the Hebrew Bible except for Esther, predate Christianity, and the words as translated by Hebrew scholars remain the same: “You shall not allow a sorceress to live”
This is REALLY weird, theres a song on Paul Oakenfold’s album “TrancePort” call GameMaster (I think) that has that quote several times. I’ve always thought the song was about wicca but now I’m not sure.
Anyone else here ever heard that song?
True but, IIRC low amounts of any hallucinagenic/psychedelic drugs over time causes strong paranoia.
Im wrong about Game Master but i’m pretty sure it was on the TrancePort CD…