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Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963) was an early British twentieth century Egyptologist of considerable international reputation. Her contributions to Egyptology and promoting the study of folklore have stood the test of time, but she is now best known for her theories of a pan-European, Pre-Christian pagan religion. Through these popular ideas she was partially responsible for the creation of Wicca and neopaganism. However, her reputation in academic circles as a witchcraft historian is extremely low because of her proven tendency to distort evidence in pursuit of her theory.

Brief Biography

Nothing is more impressive about Murray than her successful pursuit of an academic career at a time when such careers for women were seen as questionable. She was a student of linguistics and anthropology at the University College of London and a pioneer campaigner for women's rights. She went on many archaeological excavations in Egypt and Palestine working with Sir William Flinders Petrie, the famous Egyptologist in the 1890s. This enabled Murray to find work at the college and go on lecturing tours. She was named Assistant Professor of Egyptology in 1924 at University College of London, a post she held until her retirement in 1935. In 1926 she became a fellow of Britain's Royal Anthropological Institute. In 1953-1955 at the age of ninety, Margaret was made President of the Folklore Society, another distinguished honour. In 1963 at the age of 100, she published her autobiography, Centenary and The Genesis of Religion.

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 there had existed a standardised underground pagan resistance to the Christian Church across Europe organized in covens of thirteen worshipers, dedicated to a male god. They had maintained a pagan religion dating from the neolithic through the medieval period in secret practising human sacrifice, till 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 and freedom for women, its open sexuality and its resistance to Church oppression. Murray's ideas were clearly part of 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 ideas were from the beginning exposed to critiques from historians of witchcraft like C. L. Ewen, who called them "vapid balderdash", but their reviews were in obscure journals and thus failed to influence reception of her books. It is usually agreed now that her ideas, though well expressed, were the result of misinterpreting and exaggerating evidence taken from limited sources, as well as the outright falsification of some documents. The classic critical 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 academic historian has ever challenged Cohn's conclusions. Notable historians who agree in rejecting her ideas include Ronald Hutton, G. L. Kitteredge, Keith Thomas, and many others. Professor J. B. Russell's evaluation of her remarkable claims seems just:

"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"

Problems with 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 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 individualsto 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 ommitting 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 as 'reality.' 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 fact, inquisitors asked leading questions until they got the answers they wanted, so that they could execute or condemn the accused, who were invariably innocent. The coherent system she found was partially that of the Satanic witchcraft defined in books like Malleus Malficorum, 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 Mathew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, where the evidence given was extracted by dubious means and was very distorted.

Later Books

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 much 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 17th century. Saint Joan of Arc - whose Catholic piety and orthodoxy are attested in numerous documents (such as the ), 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.

The influence of Murray's thesis on modern academic thought

In a more sympathetic reading, a considerable patchwork of Pagan survivals 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 Pagan 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.

There have been some academics who, while admitting Murray exaggerated and falsified evidence, have been influenced by her ideas. Most important of these was Carlo Ginzburg, who discovered in Inquisition records hereditary groups of magicans, called benandanti in early modern Italy, who he believed showed signs of being the descendents 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 Pagan deities became revered as saints or as fairies.

The legacy of her thinking

Much like modern popular books on conspiracy theories Murray's sensational works were to become popular best sellers from the 1940s onwards and were generally believed to be true. Indeed, their influence is still massive in popular thought. Jacqueline Simpson blames contemporary historians for doing little to refute her 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 witchunts which some feminists and neopagans believe in. (SeeBurning Times). Her ideas also inspired other writers, varying from horror authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Dennis Wheatley to Robert Graves.

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.

References

• Jacqueline Simpson, "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why?" Folklore #105 (1994), pp. 89-96.
• Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon a history of modern pagan witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999.
• Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles; Their Nature and Legacy, 1991.
• Cecil L'Estrange Ewen, Some Witchcraft Criticism (1938)
• J. B. Russell A History of Witchcraft, Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans, Thames and Hudson, 1995 reprint.
• Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons.
• G. L. Kitteredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (1951) 275, 421, 565,

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971/97), 514-7

External links

Her two most influential books were:

The Witch Cult in Western Europe 1921

God of the Witches 1933

• So how old is Witchcraft really? – The role of Murray examined
• – Another site examining Murray’s historical flaws
• – An anthropologist reviews The Witchcult in Western Europe

• 1863 births
• 1963 deaths