MacMorrighan
March 12th, 2007, 03:26 PM
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A (Preliminary) Review: A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics & Pagans, by Jeffrey B. Russell & Brooks Alexander (Second Edition), Thames & Hudson, 2007.
J.B. Russell is Prof. of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and this present edition comprises a 1980 text that allegedly served as one of Ronald Hutton's primary consenting sources while writing his foundational polemics—now considered relatively obsolete by the nature of Historical quantifications, due to "current" revelations (these subsequent texts are largely in the process of being superseded): The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/hutton_review.html) [Blackwell, 1996] and The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft [Oxford University Press, 1999]. For what it's worth, Ronald Hutton set the stage and introduced Paganism as an academically respectful religion, thus removing it from the realm of "New Age non-sense" at your local bookstore. However, many that are opposed to Wicca (specifically) and Paganism (in general) have deliberately pointed to Hutton's texts, empirically, as they shout, "I told you so—it's a made-up, fake, religion!" Be that as it may, and despite Hutton's personal reservation, his early work has set new standards of rigor in the present debate concerning the origins of Paganism and its likely antiquated genesis—even forcing us to raise our standards of evidence, and searching out those scholars which vastly disagree from across the pan-academic stage (particularly from Continental Europe). As a historiography I found this text to be brilliantly even-handed and generally objective; by stark contrast, Hutton's polemics are usually extremist and right-wing in presentation. For an example of what I mean, consider that while Ronald Hutton entirely rejects any notion of a "Celtic" Cult of the Head (as discerned by Prof. Anne Ross); Prof. Miranda Green, on the other hand, takes a middle-of-the-road approach, taking it as a distinct plausibility rather than rejecting it due to some percieved lack of "evidence".
In this new publication—almost 30 years since its initial inception—Mr. Russell offers 2 new chapters concerned with current Paganism written by his present collaborator and Witch (Brooks Alexander), as well as a new Introduction and concluding-chapter.
Granted I am still in the process of reading this text (it was an early birthday present) I immediately noticed some astonishing anomalies that troubled me, albeit there is also much to enjoy and mull-over in one's gray matter. However, the latter is staunchly over-shadowed by his seeming lapse in discernment, and his apparent "ignorance" of recent evidence.
Russell habitually behaves throughout each controversial treatise of his recent edition almost like a verbally and emotionally abusive loved one who tenderly says, after the fact, "I love you." For example, when writing of Charles Leland's investigation into an Italian witchcraft cult (Aradia, or The Gospel of the Witches), he pejoratively regards his methodology by denoting it as "research" within quotation marks replete with sarcasm. However, in the same breath he states that Leland's practices were the scholastic norm of his day. So, why criticize him so harshly and gratuitously at the onset? Like my initial analogy, this bears a disingenuous tone. It is important to note that Charles Godfrey Leland was able to gain access into groups and cultures that his peers could not—a fact, and talent, that is frequently forgotten when he is maligned as the victim of duplicitous local inhabitants (a stance more than generally adopted by the present authors). Russell also implies that much of the MS. presented to Leland may have been written by his informant, Maddelena—I find this grossly unsatisfactory; for this to make much analytical sense Maddelena would have had to have been a literary prodogy, which is entirely unlikely given her provincial and impoverished stature, as well as education. Moreover, these documents are possessed of a substance, just below the thin veneer of their documentable sources, that speak of an older tradition that simply does not fit the imaginings of an entire generation of skeptical scholarship. Furthermore, we note that much of the Aradia text is presented in verse, which we know is a mnemonic device employed by cultures throughout antiquity as a means of preserving lore and local tradition.
Some other minor, although no less misleading, errors are peppered throughout this text, including a caption for a late 15th-century woodcutting depicting perceived "witches" shape-shifting in an effort to transvex towards a Sabbat. However, he apparently conflates the generic term of "shape-shifting" with the specific denotation, "lycanthropy", which refers to the transmogriphication of an individual into a wolf, hence the lycan- root (anyone who's seen the film Underworld will certainly be aware of this). While, further on, he relates that throughout Europe, by the 12th-century, the entire continent had been converted to Christianity. This polemic is severely questionable, although, more worrying, it's extremist and simplistic to a fault; it has been advanced that antiquated paganism survived throughout large swaths of Europe until the 15th-century, and easily as late as the 17th- and 18th-centuries (though the 19th-century is not entirely off the radar, due to suggestions from other scholars). Albeit the presentation Ronald Hutton relates below is debatable (and mere opinion, for we note dozens of scholars that present the history of Paganism far differently: the Pagans fought hard for their religions against the Christians to a late date; Hutton does not seem to allow for this), it serves to advance a case contrary to Russell's preferred position:
"...paganism as a formal system of religion vanished from Mediterranean Europe after the sixth century, from the western and northern parts of the continent after the eleventh, and from the north-eastern portions after the fourteenth. Among the Saami nomads of Scandinavia, it may have lingered into the seventeenth" [Witches, Druids and King Arthur, 2003: 137].
As a new edition to an antedated text from 1980 it is simply behind the times—at least behind the last 8 years of subsequent, and ground-breaking, research! Where's the foundational work of Phillip Hesselton, and even Doreen Valiente (more on that momentarily) or Donald Frew's counter-thesis, as well as Ronald Hutton's latest treatise that was briefly quoted above (he seems to use his Triumph of the Moon as a sort of "cut-off date")? Similarly, I was astonished (and not in a pleasant way, I can assure you) at this same discrepant lack throughout Margot Adler's recent up-date of her highly acclaimed occult classic, Drawing Down the Moon [Penguin Books, 2006]; as a Gardnerian High Priestess, and scholar in her own right, she should have been blatantly aware of these recent paradigm-shifting revelations! I find it problematic to note that Russell's and Brook's recent edition has apparently been justified to one side of a polemic that it is presently being re-evaluated. As a result, this title does not show the same insight and current for-thought (in this regard) as his previous texts [eg. The Devil].
Modern Pagans, and lay-readers of polemics by historians (for polemics are all that seem to exist, these days), need to be taught how to use critical thinking skills to spot clearly unsubstantiated material when they obstinately appear! While, scholars that make these blatant statements need to be censured for it, rather than given a green light, "just because it's popular and endorsed" or "scholastic suicide" to reach a differing opinion! Moreover, it has come to my attention that some scholars, because they tend to ignore a lot of evidence, actually make a habit of mischaracterizing other works and scholars, as though those writings and scholars really state something contrary than what's actually in print (these mendacious academic elites can't be bothered with the facts; after all, they've made up their collective mind). Another ailment that needs to be remedied is teaching folks how to spot opinion that is put forth as fact (Ronald Hutton happens to illustrate this remarkably in his The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (http://asphodel-long.com/html/pagan_religions.html)). As an example, Mr. Hutton states in his The Triumph of the Moon that no where throughout antiquity was any goddess worshipped as the source of geographical and human fecundity via the hieros gamos, or "sacred marriage" rite. This is opinion only—eminent Sumerologist, Samuel Noah Kramer comes to an entirely diametric, and well-founded, conclusion in his The Sumerians .
In the initial edition of this text, from 1980, Russell admonishes the existence of "Old" Dorothy Clutterback as a figment of Gerald Gardner's fertile imagination. Incensed by this unfounded accusation, Doreen Valiente (my personal hero) published an account (in Janet & Stewart Farrar's The Witches' Way in 1984) in which she located the marriage- and death-certificate of "Old Dorothy", thus proving her existence! These current revelations in consideration, Mr. Russell has made no attempt to rescind his earlier declamation; rather, "Old Dorothy" is merely portrayed as a leading figure in Gardner's personal assertions (here presented as mythical), with no mention pertaining to her factual existence. This is ultimately misleading.
Missing, also, is the ground-breaking work of Professors Carlo Ginzburg (Italy), Eva Pocs (Hungary), Emma Wilby (Britain), Phillipe Walter (France), Giuseppe Bonomo (Italy), Bengt Ankarloo (Sweden), Gustav Henningsen (Sweden), Tekla Dömötor (Hungary), Gabor Klaniczay (Hungary) and Claude Lecauteux (France), and an army of other note-worthy scholars. The latter, for what it's worth, is Prof. of Medieval Society, Civilization and Literature at the world famous academic institution, The Sorbonne, at Paris, France. Most scholars throughout continental Europe have reached the general consensus that at the heart of medieval witchcraft belief is endemic "shamanistic" antecedents to one extent or another that would certainly support certain variants of the Murray thesis—a thesis that needs up-dating for she lacked a shamanic language with which to refine her arguments, and some of her assertions certainly were incorrect [eg. Joan d'Arc]. Anything less, in the words of Emma Wilby, "is untenable". But Russell follows in the foot-steps of Ronald Hutton throughout this present edition by failing to acknowledge this growing (near-unequivocal) body of European scholarship. This failure, or relative ignorance, appears during Russell's historiographic account of the four most prominent "interpretations of European witchcraft [that] are current". Eva Pocs, for example, drew upon a sample of 2,000 witch-trials (by far the largest study to date) and found that medieval witchcraft belief, and those reported traditions, have turned out to be inseparable from local shamanic traditions. Prof. Pocs enduring contribution is generally under-rated, also—had it not been for her, a great many witchcraft trial documents would have gone untranslated into the English language for the explicit use of scholars world-wide!
I can only describe the constant absence of these major contending-theories from continental Europe throughout general works by leading American and British scholars on the subject of witchcraft as "a conspiracy of silence", perhaps even as a desire for "academic subjugation" (a monopoly, if you will)! (I don't know about you, but I certainly don't like feeling as though I've had the fleece pulled over my eyes!) If you would like to read some important questions concerned with modern Pagan research, as well as some equally important counter-arguments, please navigate the following well thought out site (http://www.egregores.org/). While, at the same time, Prof. Carlo Ginzburg is generally under-rated by academia for his contributions; in fact, in a polemic by both J.B. Russell and one Norman Cohn (according to Prof. Ginzburg in the English preface to his I Benandanti, 1966), these historians have blatantly mischaracterized his work! One might reasonably argue that such a blatant absence as these presently discussed "values" in the equation of medieval witchcraft is a form of "thought reformation" on behalf of the academic "ruling elite".
However, Russell (at least in this present text) wisely shows more sensitivity towards the Murray thesis than is usually allowed in academic circles, and distances himself from those that claim it has collapsed entirely with all its plausible variants; such an unyielding position levied against Murray's work is bunk, pure and simple, for more well-grounded authorities have shown a disdain towards these extremist positions! Hence, it is worth bearing in mind what historian Peter Kingsley once (wisely) said, "Academically, doubt is a virtue. It is wise to be cautious, virtuous to allow for different points of view. The problem arises when this attitude hardens: then doubting becomes a certainty in itself, and we forget the importance of doubting our doubt." Ah, how soon we forget the contributions of our predecessors, eh?
As a result, another quibble is that he endorses, without qualification, the work of Norman Cohn, who has been thoroughly debunked! His often cited text is usually referred to as that which has "closed the door" on the debate surrounding the Murray thesis. But, is this an accurate appraisal? The late Prof. Cohn, for what it's worth, is extremist and unprofessional in his mendacious pedantry (albeit I use the latter term loosely, because he plays fast and loose with the rules). In his polemic, Europe's Inner Demons, it has been proven (http://www.vaccines.plus.com/Murray%20and%20the%20Professor.html) that Cohn presented demonstrably false statements about Margaret Murray by simply comparing his allegations alongside what she actually wrote (one would reasonably assume that a scholar, clearly as passionate as he, should have been aware of the source-material documented in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and The God of the Witches). His conclusions scholars love to talk up; however, the evidence in question usually gets swept beneath the proverbial "rug". Why? Because one might not believe them, otherwise—that's why! When this is taken into account with his earlier mischaracterization of Carlo Ginzburg (a model tragically followed by a slew of American and British scholars, including Ronald Hutton in his Triumph of the Moon and an article published through the British journal, Folklore (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_1_111/ai_62685559)) a pattern of behaviour begins to emerge which must not go unrecognized! Cohn also portrays blatant ageist and sexist tactics—discriminatory as they are—as a means through which he may entirely disregard a scholar, thesis, or otherwise excellent evidence. He complains that Murray had the audacity to write anything on the subject "because she was nearly sixty!"; while he dismisses entirely uncoerced testimony of several woman who stated that they traveled to the Sabbat—generations before the Inquisition was anywhere near its apex!—of being senile old women, because he can't be bothered with the facts that question his argument. In so doing, he apparently takes a page directly from The Canon Episcopi that fully denounced such accounts as dillusional. This relatively harsh criticism probably arises from Cohn's post-WWII sympathy towards the Holocaust victims and its survivors (being, himself, of Jewish heritage), which he believed to be the result of irrational Nazi fears (for which there is ample suggestion). However, at the time of writing, Gardnerianism was greatly expanding and making headlines, and Cohn simply saw it as another form of "the irrational" (a concept he viewed as proto-Nazi in essence) or a superstitious cult (to which he was deeply opposed as a rationalist); indeed, he probably viewed it as his duty to prove its claims an impossibility, without which, it would become (he hoped) impotent and not pose any psycho-sociological harm to relevant Western culture. No matter how one slices it, it appears to have been a simple "knee-jerk reaction" on his part.
However, it is important to point out that Mr. Russell diverges from Hutton on some relatively key issues. For example, while Russell (in the present work, and his earlier monograph The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity [Cornell University Press, 1977]) fervently acknowledges that the medieval iconography of the Devil directly stems from known images of pagan gods, such as Pan. Ronald Hutton, on the other hand (in Triumph of the Moon), rejects such assertions as rubbish for which there is no evidence (a firm thesis he would like us to believe); or otherwise no academic literature on the topic has been sufficiently published (though he does not, strangely, cite Russell as an immediate antithesis to his hard-nosed conclusions when it doesn't seem to suit his agenda). If one has only read Hutton's text on the topic, of course he would present an iron-clad case; but it must be taken into consideration that there is a relative corpus of academia that does—and should—disagree with his (often "narrowly-informed") assumptions. I say "narrowly-informed", not as a term of abuse, but as a matter of fact. In a response Hutton wrote to Asphodel P. Long's review of his text The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (linked above), he acknowledged that he didn't know enough about the topic before he wrote the book and has been yearning to re-write it for several years. However, it has recently been brought to my attention by an Alexandrian H.P. from New Zealand (upon checking Hutton's sources), that Ronald has been mendaciously mischaracterizing scholars throughout his presentation of The Triumph of the Moon—it turns out that many of those scholars (at least those published in languages in which my New Zealand informant is fluent) which Hutton claims agree with him (particularly in that there was never any whiff of pagan survivalism), in reality, staunchly disagree with him, and present evidence to the contrary (many of them conclude that there was, in fact, pagan survivals throughout Europe regardless of its Christianization). So, one must wonder, of course, why he has not been censured for this; or at least why scholars familiar with these cited works have not flooded peer-reviewed journals and stated that he has not been honest with his readers as a matter of fact? Perhaps it was because Paganism was simply not (yet!) considered intellectually, or academically, respectible at the time in which The Triumph of the Moon was initially published. Be that as it may, Ronald's views are to be regarded as extreme and atypical when compared to the wider breadth of scholarship written on the topic of paganism and witchcraft. Furthermore, it's a shame that most modern readers do not know what Prof. Morton Smith knew (how liberating it would, otherwise, be!), that "...many scholars reject on principle all conjecture except their own" [emphasis mine].
As a new edition (even lavishly illustrated with re-prints and brilliant photographs!), I personally found it to be an inadequate up-date; it was lacking in current revelations and leading research—essentially it was a drastically missed opportunity to present an up-dated historiography concerned with the present revelations regarding the history of Gardnerianism and medieval witchcraft belief. Indeed, this text brings to mind a well-known quote by Upton Sinclair (as do all glib "professional" scholars, for that matter, who lack the courage to see the forest for the trees in their zealous denial): "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." (Just call me cynical and disillusioned!) Sadly, and to reiterate, there is a double-standard enshrined within academia with which I am phenomenally uncomfortable (for obvious reasons)! Be that as it may, this book still remains a text every Witch ought to posses on his or her personal library shelf (even if you have come to your own conclusions based upon recent evidence and research, which everyone should!). However, as I plow my way through this text, I am sure that I will continue to find more to love and recommend within it, such as his fascinating presentation regarding the etymology of the word "witch"—it bears distinct magico-religious denotations, despite the pleas of certain scholars! Or the truly ubiquitous nature of diabolical witch-fugure beliefs throughout antiquity—scholars can reach no firm conclusions about how to best quantify these re-occuring leitmotivs. Unfortunately, regardless that a respective text wisely denotes itself as "[U]A History...", lay-readers and Pagans alike, somehow, seem to intuitively respond as though it actually reads "The History" (assuming the definative article), simply because it was written by someone with a Ph.D.—a grievous mistake! I hope, one day,to see it remedied; but until then, I must be content to express the leanings of other scholars throughout academe. (Meanwhile, I am presently multi-tasking through Peter Berresford Ellis's Celtic Women: Women in Celtic Society and Literature [Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996] and T. W. Potter's & Catherine John's Roman Britain: Exploring the Roman World [The University of California Press, 1992]—I might have a review for them, shortly. Gods, I love the Half Price Bookstore!) Enjoy and Happy Reading!
A (Preliminary) Review: A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics & Pagans, by Jeffrey B. Russell & Brooks Alexander (Second Edition), Thames & Hudson, 2007.
J.B. Russell is Prof. of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and this present edition comprises a 1980 text that allegedly served as one of Ronald Hutton's primary consenting sources while writing his foundational polemics—now considered relatively obsolete by the nature of Historical quantifications, due to "current" revelations (these subsequent texts are largely in the process of being superseded): The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/hutton_review.html) [Blackwell, 1996] and The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft [Oxford University Press, 1999]. For what it's worth, Ronald Hutton set the stage and introduced Paganism as an academically respectful religion, thus removing it from the realm of "New Age non-sense" at your local bookstore. However, many that are opposed to Wicca (specifically) and Paganism (in general) have deliberately pointed to Hutton's texts, empirically, as they shout, "I told you so—it's a made-up, fake, religion!" Be that as it may, and despite Hutton's personal reservation, his early work has set new standards of rigor in the present debate concerning the origins of Paganism and its likely antiquated genesis—even forcing us to raise our standards of evidence, and searching out those scholars which vastly disagree from across the pan-academic stage (particularly from Continental Europe). As a historiography I found this text to be brilliantly even-handed and generally objective; by stark contrast, Hutton's polemics are usually extremist and right-wing in presentation. For an example of what I mean, consider that while Ronald Hutton entirely rejects any notion of a "Celtic" Cult of the Head (as discerned by Prof. Anne Ross); Prof. Miranda Green, on the other hand, takes a middle-of-the-road approach, taking it as a distinct plausibility rather than rejecting it due to some percieved lack of "evidence".
In this new publication—almost 30 years since its initial inception—Mr. Russell offers 2 new chapters concerned with current Paganism written by his present collaborator and Witch (Brooks Alexander), as well as a new Introduction and concluding-chapter.
Granted I am still in the process of reading this text (it was an early birthday present) I immediately noticed some astonishing anomalies that troubled me, albeit there is also much to enjoy and mull-over in one's gray matter. However, the latter is staunchly over-shadowed by his seeming lapse in discernment, and his apparent "ignorance" of recent evidence.
Russell habitually behaves throughout each controversial treatise of his recent edition almost like a verbally and emotionally abusive loved one who tenderly says, after the fact, "I love you." For example, when writing of Charles Leland's investigation into an Italian witchcraft cult (Aradia, or The Gospel of the Witches), he pejoratively regards his methodology by denoting it as "research" within quotation marks replete with sarcasm. However, in the same breath he states that Leland's practices were the scholastic norm of his day. So, why criticize him so harshly and gratuitously at the onset? Like my initial analogy, this bears a disingenuous tone. It is important to note that Charles Godfrey Leland was able to gain access into groups and cultures that his peers could not—a fact, and talent, that is frequently forgotten when he is maligned as the victim of duplicitous local inhabitants (a stance more than generally adopted by the present authors). Russell also implies that much of the MS. presented to Leland may have been written by his informant, Maddelena—I find this grossly unsatisfactory; for this to make much analytical sense Maddelena would have had to have been a literary prodogy, which is entirely unlikely given her provincial and impoverished stature, as well as education. Moreover, these documents are possessed of a substance, just below the thin veneer of their documentable sources, that speak of an older tradition that simply does not fit the imaginings of an entire generation of skeptical scholarship. Furthermore, we note that much of the Aradia text is presented in verse, which we know is a mnemonic device employed by cultures throughout antiquity as a means of preserving lore and local tradition.
Some other minor, although no less misleading, errors are peppered throughout this text, including a caption for a late 15th-century woodcutting depicting perceived "witches" shape-shifting in an effort to transvex towards a Sabbat. However, he apparently conflates the generic term of "shape-shifting" with the specific denotation, "lycanthropy", which refers to the transmogriphication of an individual into a wolf, hence the lycan- root (anyone who's seen the film Underworld will certainly be aware of this). While, further on, he relates that throughout Europe, by the 12th-century, the entire continent had been converted to Christianity. This polemic is severely questionable, although, more worrying, it's extremist and simplistic to a fault; it has been advanced that antiquated paganism survived throughout large swaths of Europe until the 15th-century, and easily as late as the 17th- and 18th-centuries (though the 19th-century is not entirely off the radar, due to suggestions from other scholars). Albeit the presentation Ronald Hutton relates below is debatable (and mere opinion, for we note dozens of scholars that present the history of Paganism far differently: the Pagans fought hard for their religions against the Christians to a late date; Hutton does not seem to allow for this), it serves to advance a case contrary to Russell's preferred position:
"...paganism as a formal system of religion vanished from Mediterranean Europe after the sixth century, from the western and northern parts of the continent after the eleventh, and from the north-eastern portions after the fourteenth. Among the Saami nomads of Scandinavia, it may have lingered into the seventeenth" [Witches, Druids and King Arthur, 2003: 137].
As a new edition to an antedated text from 1980 it is simply behind the times—at least behind the last 8 years of subsequent, and ground-breaking, research! Where's the foundational work of Phillip Hesselton, and even Doreen Valiente (more on that momentarily) or Donald Frew's counter-thesis, as well as Ronald Hutton's latest treatise that was briefly quoted above (he seems to use his Triumph of the Moon as a sort of "cut-off date")? Similarly, I was astonished (and not in a pleasant way, I can assure you) at this same discrepant lack throughout Margot Adler's recent up-date of her highly acclaimed occult classic, Drawing Down the Moon [Penguin Books, 2006]; as a Gardnerian High Priestess, and scholar in her own right, she should have been blatantly aware of these recent paradigm-shifting revelations! I find it problematic to note that Russell's and Brook's recent edition has apparently been justified to one side of a polemic that it is presently being re-evaluated. As a result, this title does not show the same insight and current for-thought (in this regard) as his previous texts [eg. The Devil].
Modern Pagans, and lay-readers of polemics by historians (for polemics are all that seem to exist, these days), need to be taught how to use critical thinking skills to spot clearly unsubstantiated material when they obstinately appear! While, scholars that make these blatant statements need to be censured for it, rather than given a green light, "just because it's popular and endorsed" or "scholastic suicide" to reach a differing opinion! Moreover, it has come to my attention that some scholars, because they tend to ignore a lot of evidence, actually make a habit of mischaracterizing other works and scholars, as though those writings and scholars really state something contrary than what's actually in print (these mendacious academic elites can't be bothered with the facts; after all, they've made up their collective mind). Another ailment that needs to be remedied is teaching folks how to spot opinion that is put forth as fact (Ronald Hutton happens to illustrate this remarkably in his The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (http://asphodel-long.com/html/pagan_religions.html)). As an example, Mr. Hutton states in his The Triumph of the Moon that no where throughout antiquity was any goddess worshipped as the source of geographical and human fecundity via the hieros gamos, or "sacred marriage" rite. This is opinion only—eminent Sumerologist, Samuel Noah Kramer comes to an entirely diametric, and well-founded, conclusion in his The Sumerians .
In the initial edition of this text, from 1980, Russell admonishes the existence of "Old" Dorothy Clutterback as a figment of Gerald Gardner's fertile imagination. Incensed by this unfounded accusation, Doreen Valiente (my personal hero) published an account (in Janet & Stewart Farrar's The Witches' Way in 1984) in which she located the marriage- and death-certificate of "Old Dorothy", thus proving her existence! These current revelations in consideration, Mr. Russell has made no attempt to rescind his earlier declamation; rather, "Old Dorothy" is merely portrayed as a leading figure in Gardner's personal assertions (here presented as mythical), with no mention pertaining to her factual existence. This is ultimately misleading.
Missing, also, is the ground-breaking work of Professors Carlo Ginzburg (Italy), Eva Pocs (Hungary), Emma Wilby (Britain), Phillipe Walter (France), Giuseppe Bonomo (Italy), Bengt Ankarloo (Sweden), Gustav Henningsen (Sweden), Tekla Dömötor (Hungary), Gabor Klaniczay (Hungary) and Claude Lecauteux (France), and an army of other note-worthy scholars. The latter, for what it's worth, is Prof. of Medieval Society, Civilization and Literature at the world famous academic institution, The Sorbonne, at Paris, France. Most scholars throughout continental Europe have reached the general consensus that at the heart of medieval witchcraft belief is endemic "shamanistic" antecedents to one extent or another that would certainly support certain variants of the Murray thesis—a thesis that needs up-dating for she lacked a shamanic language with which to refine her arguments, and some of her assertions certainly were incorrect [eg. Joan d'Arc]. Anything less, in the words of Emma Wilby, "is untenable". But Russell follows in the foot-steps of Ronald Hutton throughout this present edition by failing to acknowledge this growing (near-unequivocal) body of European scholarship. This failure, or relative ignorance, appears during Russell's historiographic account of the four most prominent "interpretations of European witchcraft [that] are current". Eva Pocs, for example, drew upon a sample of 2,000 witch-trials (by far the largest study to date) and found that medieval witchcraft belief, and those reported traditions, have turned out to be inseparable from local shamanic traditions. Prof. Pocs enduring contribution is generally under-rated, also—had it not been for her, a great many witchcraft trial documents would have gone untranslated into the English language for the explicit use of scholars world-wide!
I can only describe the constant absence of these major contending-theories from continental Europe throughout general works by leading American and British scholars on the subject of witchcraft as "a conspiracy of silence", perhaps even as a desire for "academic subjugation" (a monopoly, if you will)! (I don't know about you, but I certainly don't like feeling as though I've had the fleece pulled over my eyes!) If you would like to read some important questions concerned with modern Pagan research, as well as some equally important counter-arguments, please navigate the following well thought out site (http://www.egregores.org/). While, at the same time, Prof. Carlo Ginzburg is generally under-rated by academia for his contributions; in fact, in a polemic by both J.B. Russell and one Norman Cohn (according to Prof. Ginzburg in the English preface to his I Benandanti, 1966), these historians have blatantly mischaracterized his work! One might reasonably argue that such a blatant absence as these presently discussed "values" in the equation of medieval witchcraft is a form of "thought reformation" on behalf of the academic "ruling elite".
However, Russell (at least in this present text) wisely shows more sensitivity towards the Murray thesis than is usually allowed in academic circles, and distances himself from those that claim it has collapsed entirely with all its plausible variants; such an unyielding position levied against Murray's work is bunk, pure and simple, for more well-grounded authorities have shown a disdain towards these extremist positions! Hence, it is worth bearing in mind what historian Peter Kingsley once (wisely) said, "Academically, doubt is a virtue. It is wise to be cautious, virtuous to allow for different points of view. The problem arises when this attitude hardens: then doubting becomes a certainty in itself, and we forget the importance of doubting our doubt." Ah, how soon we forget the contributions of our predecessors, eh?
As a result, another quibble is that he endorses, without qualification, the work of Norman Cohn, who has been thoroughly debunked! His often cited text is usually referred to as that which has "closed the door" on the debate surrounding the Murray thesis. But, is this an accurate appraisal? The late Prof. Cohn, for what it's worth, is extremist and unprofessional in his mendacious pedantry (albeit I use the latter term loosely, because he plays fast and loose with the rules). In his polemic, Europe's Inner Demons, it has been proven (http://www.vaccines.plus.com/Murray%20and%20the%20Professor.html) that Cohn presented demonstrably false statements about Margaret Murray by simply comparing his allegations alongside what she actually wrote (one would reasonably assume that a scholar, clearly as passionate as he, should have been aware of the source-material documented in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and The God of the Witches). His conclusions scholars love to talk up; however, the evidence in question usually gets swept beneath the proverbial "rug". Why? Because one might not believe them, otherwise—that's why! When this is taken into account with his earlier mischaracterization of Carlo Ginzburg (a model tragically followed by a slew of American and British scholars, including Ronald Hutton in his Triumph of the Moon and an article published through the British journal, Folklore (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_1_111/ai_62685559)) a pattern of behaviour begins to emerge which must not go unrecognized! Cohn also portrays blatant ageist and sexist tactics—discriminatory as they are—as a means through which he may entirely disregard a scholar, thesis, or otherwise excellent evidence. He complains that Murray had the audacity to write anything on the subject "because she was nearly sixty!"; while he dismisses entirely uncoerced testimony of several woman who stated that they traveled to the Sabbat—generations before the Inquisition was anywhere near its apex!—of being senile old women, because he can't be bothered with the facts that question his argument. In so doing, he apparently takes a page directly from The Canon Episcopi that fully denounced such accounts as dillusional. This relatively harsh criticism probably arises from Cohn's post-WWII sympathy towards the Holocaust victims and its survivors (being, himself, of Jewish heritage), which he believed to be the result of irrational Nazi fears (for which there is ample suggestion). However, at the time of writing, Gardnerianism was greatly expanding and making headlines, and Cohn simply saw it as another form of "the irrational" (a concept he viewed as proto-Nazi in essence) or a superstitious cult (to which he was deeply opposed as a rationalist); indeed, he probably viewed it as his duty to prove its claims an impossibility, without which, it would become (he hoped) impotent and not pose any psycho-sociological harm to relevant Western culture. No matter how one slices it, it appears to have been a simple "knee-jerk reaction" on his part.
However, it is important to point out that Mr. Russell diverges from Hutton on some relatively key issues. For example, while Russell (in the present work, and his earlier monograph The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity [Cornell University Press, 1977]) fervently acknowledges that the medieval iconography of the Devil directly stems from known images of pagan gods, such as Pan. Ronald Hutton, on the other hand (in Triumph of the Moon), rejects such assertions as rubbish for which there is no evidence (a firm thesis he would like us to believe); or otherwise no academic literature on the topic has been sufficiently published (though he does not, strangely, cite Russell as an immediate antithesis to his hard-nosed conclusions when it doesn't seem to suit his agenda). If one has only read Hutton's text on the topic, of course he would present an iron-clad case; but it must be taken into consideration that there is a relative corpus of academia that does—and should—disagree with his (often "narrowly-informed") assumptions. I say "narrowly-informed", not as a term of abuse, but as a matter of fact. In a response Hutton wrote to Asphodel P. Long's review of his text The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (linked above), he acknowledged that he didn't know enough about the topic before he wrote the book and has been yearning to re-write it for several years. However, it has recently been brought to my attention by an Alexandrian H.P. from New Zealand (upon checking Hutton's sources), that Ronald has been mendaciously mischaracterizing scholars throughout his presentation of The Triumph of the Moon—it turns out that many of those scholars (at least those published in languages in which my New Zealand informant is fluent) which Hutton claims agree with him (particularly in that there was never any whiff of pagan survivalism), in reality, staunchly disagree with him, and present evidence to the contrary (many of them conclude that there was, in fact, pagan survivals throughout Europe regardless of its Christianization). So, one must wonder, of course, why he has not been censured for this; or at least why scholars familiar with these cited works have not flooded peer-reviewed journals and stated that he has not been honest with his readers as a matter of fact? Perhaps it was because Paganism was simply not (yet!) considered intellectually, or academically, respectible at the time in which The Triumph of the Moon was initially published. Be that as it may, Ronald's views are to be regarded as extreme and atypical when compared to the wider breadth of scholarship written on the topic of paganism and witchcraft. Furthermore, it's a shame that most modern readers do not know what Prof. Morton Smith knew (how liberating it would, otherwise, be!), that "...many scholars reject on principle all conjecture except their own" [emphasis mine].
As a new edition (even lavishly illustrated with re-prints and brilliant photographs!), I personally found it to be an inadequate up-date; it was lacking in current revelations and leading research—essentially it was a drastically missed opportunity to present an up-dated historiography concerned with the present revelations regarding the history of Gardnerianism and medieval witchcraft belief. Indeed, this text brings to mind a well-known quote by Upton Sinclair (as do all glib "professional" scholars, for that matter, who lack the courage to see the forest for the trees in their zealous denial): "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." (Just call me cynical and disillusioned!) Sadly, and to reiterate, there is a double-standard enshrined within academia with which I am phenomenally uncomfortable (for obvious reasons)! Be that as it may, this book still remains a text every Witch ought to posses on his or her personal library shelf (even if you have come to your own conclusions based upon recent evidence and research, which everyone should!). However, as I plow my way through this text, I am sure that I will continue to find more to love and recommend within it, such as his fascinating presentation regarding the etymology of the word "witch"—it bears distinct magico-religious denotations, despite the pleas of certain scholars! Or the truly ubiquitous nature of diabolical witch-fugure beliefs throughout antiquity—scholars can reach no firm conclusions about how to best quantify these re-occuring leitmotivs. Unfortunately, regardless that a respective text wisely denotes itself as "[U]A History...", lay-readers and Pagans alike, somehow, seem to intuitively respond as though it actually reads "The History" (assuming the definative article), simply because it was written by someone with a Ph.D.—a grievous mistake! I hope, one day,to see it remedied; but until then, I must be content to express the leanings of other scholars throughout academe. (Meanwhile, I am presently multi-tasking through Peter Berresford Ellis's Celtic Women: Women in Celtic Society and Literature [Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996] and T. W. Potter's & Catherine John's Roman Britain: Exploring the Roman World [The University of California Press, 1992]—I might have a review for them, shortly. Gods, I love the Half Price Bookstore!) Enjoy and Happy Reading!