A Book review
of:
It is my
perception that the term Traditional Witchcraft over the years has become a
term used in greater and greater frequency, as the craft has become more
inclusive. This might be due to families guarding the craft having been more
open with some of their mysteries and have shared in greater degree than
before, but there are also two other elements that has contributed to this
increase in practitioners of Traditional Craft and Craft circles in themselves.
One of them being the greater field of folk magic that utilizes spells and
charms that throughout in history was condemned, judged and labelled as ‘witchcraft’,
hence practitioners of folk magic might end up seeing their craft as both
traditional and as witchcraft. The other factor is born from the spirit of
democracy that says we can all be what we want to be because we all are equal.
Naturally democracy is a more complex idea, but this push towards taking what
one want because we are equally deserving might have played a role in the
modern tendency of “creating one’s own tradition” rooting this in the use of
traditional elements of the simple succession of legacy through some form of
initiation or induction into the newly formed tradition. I am not the warden of
the Craft and so I will not pass any judgment on this as such besides pointing
out these tendencies that can both muddy the water as much as offer up clarity.
It is in this
field of investigation that I find Gemma’s books so great and what she is doing
in Silent as the Trees is exemplary.
In this book she is presenting the witchy ancestry of Devonshire through the practitioners
that lived there and their art and is even presenting a grammary or Black Book
of the art rooted I Devonshire craft. In doing this she is demonstrating how
land and need moves the art in a given direction yet in this we also see how
the common facets of the Craft is still present and recognizable in the lives
of the practitioners and in the legacy they left. She is illustrating this
legacy by enlighten us about the craft of Cecil Williamson who she terms a
modern cunning man with an interest in the ways of the wayside witches. The
wayside witches where the solitary wise ones that usually stayed in the
outskirts of the village, either physically or ideologically. Through using
Williamson, the founder of the Museum of Witchcraft as an example of the
cunning craft she is also using the opportunity of introducing Gerald Gardner,
the founder of Wicca, an once friend of Cecil to illustrate the differences
between the two men and in that she is also bringing clarity in what separates
the fertility religion known as Wicca from the Craft in a traditional sense and
makes it evident through her book how Traditional Craft can be recognized and
in this she is in particular highlighting the importance of the witches’
familiar and the ability of skin-leaping as she is demonstrating how the craft
is at heart amoral and beyond good and evil as is rooted in need and deed.